question Koji again. "I'm Alex?"
"Alexandros Gerakis. That is Patrick. And Setek."
"They cut me," Alex said, feeling his abdomen. "The second jumpship crew. I couldn't help you!"
"I didn't need your help," Koji replied. "I killed them all."
"Good. We need to debrief."
"No, you don't," Koji said. "We don't need your information any longer."
"How much time has passed?" Setek asked.
"Forty years since I last rescued you," Koji answered.
Alex looked at Setek with a frown.
"This is not our ship," Setek stated, a wave of his arm indicating the evidence of an unfamiliar hospital room. "Where are we?"
Being closest to it, Aylis opened the door and stepped into the hospital corridor. The others allowed Alex and Zakiya to exit the room next, and Zakiya took her husband's arm. Alex looked at her and at her grasp of his arm. He smiled. When Setek saw their connection, he offered his arm to Aylis. Aylis hesitated then placed a trembling hand on his forearm.
In the hospital lobby a squad of Marines in minimum battle dress snapped to attention, then fell in behind them as they exited the hospital. Outside the hospital hundreds of people lined the walk, waiting to see Alex and Setek. Zakiya watched Alex as he reacted. He adapted to the crowds and to the planet-like environment but his first response was restrained amazement.
As they walked, Alex and Setek took in every detail of the scenery but made no comments and asked no questions. Aylis let her hand fall away from Setek's arm and he didn't seem to notice. They eventually arrived at a cottage situated on a slope above the apartments at the edge of the lake. The Marines took sentry positions by the cottage.
"The Marines are a temporary precaution," Zakiya explained. "You are strangers to us and we don't trust you yet. You are free to move about the ship but they must accompany you."
"This is a ship?" Setek queried, surveying the great expanse of the visible biosphere.
"It's called the Freedom," Zakiya replied. "Koji will tell you about it. This cottage is where Koji lives. There is room for two more." As she pulled her hand from Alex's arm, her emotions tried to burst loose, and she needed to leave soon, before they did! Aylis had already stepped away from Setek. She turned to join Aylis.
"Are you leaving us so soon?" Alex inquired, sounding a little disturbed.
"We remember too well who you were," Zakiya said. "We worry about who you are. And we need to take you in small, careful doses."
2-35 Tea and Paternity
"It is as you suspected," Direk said to Zakiya and his mother. "Patrick did not tell us about this."
"He's afraid of them," Aylis said. "And perhaps he doesn't know about it, even though he would have to have been the one who did the surgery."
"They are telepathic, then," Zakiya said.
"Essentially. By electronic means. The signals we sampled after they awoke came from their bodies. The frequency range and the absence of overlap between sources suggests the timing of a conversation. Koji did most of the talking, probably explaining as much as he could about their new situation. This is why they were so quiet during the walk from the hospital to their cottage."
"You couldn't decrypt the signals?"
"I don't believe the signals are encrypted. Not in the mathematical sense. These are thoughts, and thoughts require a human brain to experience them. We may simply need to duplicate their transducer methods and connection locations in our own brains. It must be equivalent to how our auxiliary memory reaches our conscious."
"They were probably too paranoid to allow Pat to keep the expert data or even the memory of the procedure."
"It shouldn't take long to duplicate the technology," Aylis said. "But it may require a signal switching mechanism. This may be why their auxiliary memories are cut off. They didn't develop a method to switch between inputs."
"It is amazing - but quite believable - that they could engineer both the telepathic circuitry and a form of auxiliary memory," Zakiya said.
"I think I gave them some preliminary research on auxiliary memory technology," Aylis said. "They might have found scientific help in barbarian space."
"Shiplink conversation without subvocalizing or eye-point gyroscopy has probably been a medical engineering research project for the Navy for a long time," Direk said. "That they apparently accomplished it under their severe circumstances is more than amazing."
"I was afraid to examine them too closely without understanding precisely how the auxiliary memories fit into the cell ecology," Aylis said, "but they appear undamaged. I hope they were able to store their most vital memories, everything that would remind them of who they were."
"They will have to be confronted about it," Zakiya said. "The people we came to find are locked away in those devices."
= = =
He crossed her threshold. The Marine saluted her and took his position outside the doorway. She closed the door and followed him into her apartment. He turned to her and spoke in a quiet and humble manner.
"Although you may not want to be reminded of the tragedy," Alex said, "I learned of the two sons you recently lost and I offer my condolences."
It disturbed Zakiya more by its unexpected sensitivity than for the sorrow it refreshed. Alex could not be the sensitive person she once loved, and to have him ape it so perfectly made her worry that she was wrong about him in one way or another. Either he was not as bad as Patrick insisted, and she was cruel to treat him so suspiciously, or he was worse than she could imagine from Patrick's warnings. Alex and Setek could adapt themselves to every situation, Patrick said. They were consummate actors.
"Thank you," she responded. She suggested he sit, with a gesture toward a chair. She went to the kitchen and brought back two glasses of iced tea. She sat down opposite him and tried not to let her eyes devour him so greedily. He was, of course, a handsome man, his face an appealing Mediterranean color, his eyes startling blue, his shoulders powerful, his stature rangy and tall, his lips so... She stopped herself, nearly horrified at how her entire being was reacting to his nearness. It had also been far too long since she had been with a man or had even been interested in being with a man, romantically or otherwise.
"Ah, just the thing," he said of the tea. "My mouth is quite dry, anticipating this visit."
She smiled but could not afford amusement. Her own mouth was also dry. She sipped tea to find some lubrication for speech. She wondered how she appeared to him, irritated that she had spent some extra effort to improve her appearance. "I assume you now have a good picture of your situation," she said. "Koji was very busy collecting information and making friends before you awoke." Her eyes did not sip but still drank him in! Despite how she had tried to lecture herself, to prepare herself for this meeting, he still affected her profoundly, as though his physical being had every pleasing feature and operated every chemical weapon that would paralyze her will to withstand his assault on her. Even her own memories subverted her resistance. She plainly wanted him, in every possible way. Every safe topic of conversation, every clever question aimed at detecting his secret intentions, and almost every sane thought flew out of her mind, leaving her to try whatever her imagination could spare from its obsession with a man who was a legend, and a legend more to her than to anyone else. She needed a diversion, and only two came to mind.
"Setek and I are astounded by your accomplishments," Alex was saying. "And now you are arming the ship. We hope we are in your plans, if not in your hearts."
"I... I don't see any need for spies and assassins in my plans."
"We're not proud of what we did." Alex paused as if in somber thought, then he took a long drink of his tea. "Why did you find us, if not for war? Wasn't that our original goal - to find the enemy and try to defeat it?"
"We were explorers, not soldiers. We were scientist-adventurers. Aylis and I searched for you because you are all family. We love you." She couldn't soften that last verb soon enough.
"Love? After all this
time? We were different people in a different era. Now you are an admiral. You are a military person. And you have this ship."
"One ship. Many barbarians. Too many." It was truth but it still sounded weak.
He took another drink of tea and she copied him. He didn't seem affected by any of her responses but that meant nothing. He would do what he needed to do.
"So, I'm useless," he said lightly, "unless I can be retrained. What do you need me to do?"
"I need you to remember who you were." She stared at him. She was hopeless. She was helpless. She was even beginning not to care that she was hopeless and helpless!
He stood up to escape her stare and walked over to a wall that displayed images of several artworks. They were copies of paintings created by Rafael de LaGuardia. "There was always the temptation," he said to the wall. "We have hidden memories, like yours, but they are disconnected. We had to remove the temptation."
"We can help you reconnect them," she offered hopefully.
"Wait a little longer," he said in a tone of voice that hinted at eventual agreement. He turned from the paintings. "I may yet be useful to you. I fear the memories of the man I was."
"Why?"
"Because they will kill me. And my present memories will kill the man I was."
Zakiya decided not to pursue the subject. She agreed with him. Sadly she reminded herself that he and she would never be that newly married couple so in love with each other. She hoped, however, they could become at least a