Ethan of Athos (16 page)

Dr. Faz Jahar's fortunes took an abrupt upward turn when Terrence Cee hit puberty. Completion of his brain growth and change in his biochemical balance at last activated the frustratingly quiescent organ. Cee's telepathic abilities became demonstrable, reliable, repeatable.

There were limitations. The organ could only be kicked into a state of electrical receptivity upon the ingestion of high doses of the amino acid tyramine Receptivity faded as Cee's body metabolized the excess and returned him to his original biochemical balance. Telepathic range was limited to a few hundred meters at best. Reception was blocked by any barrier that interfered with the electrical signals emitted by the target brains.

Some minds could be experienced more clearly than others, some could barely be picked up at all even when Cee was actually touching his target's body. This seemed to be a problem of fit, or match, between sender and receiver, for some minds that registered as no more than a formless, mushy sense of life to Terrence came through in hallucinatory clarity -- subvocalization, sensory input, the stream of conscious thought, and all -- to Janine, and vice versa.

Too many individuals within target range created interference with each other. “Like being at a party where everything is too loud,” said Cee, “and straining to pick out one conversation.”

Dr. Jahar had primed Terrence Cee all his short life for his destiny in service to Cetaganda, and at first Cee had been content, even proud, to fulfill it. The first hairline cracks in his resolve came as he became familiar with the true minds of the hard-edged security personnel who surrounded the project. “Their insides didn't match their outsides, “ explained Cee. “The worst ones were so far gone in their corruptions, they didn't even smell it anymore.”

The cracks propagated with each new experimental assignment in counter-intelligence.

“Millisor's deadliest mistake,” Cee said thoughtfully, “was having us probe the minds of suspected intellectual dissidents while he interrogated them on their loyalty. I never knew people like them were possible, before.”

Cee began military training with carefully selected private tutors. There was talk of using him as a field agent, on safe assignments or ones vital enough to justify risking his expensive person. There was no talk at all of ever admitting him to the Ghem-comrades, the tightly-knit society of men who controlled the officer corps and the military junta that in turn controlled the planet of Cetaganda, its conquests, and its client outposts.

Cee's telepathy gave him no secret window into the subconscious minds of his subjects. The only memories he could probe were those the subjects were presently calling to mind. This made using Cee for mere surveillance, in the hopes of catching something valuable on the fly-by, rather wasteful of the telepath's time. Organized interrogations were much more efficient. The interrogations Cee attended became wider in scope, and often much uglier.

“I understand completely,” said Ethan with a small shiver.

It was Janine, perhaps, who first began thinking of their creators as their captors. The dream of flight, never spoken aloud, fed back and forth between them during the rare occasions when both their powers were activated at the same time. Both began siphoning off and hoarding their tyramine tablets. Escape plans were laid, debated, and honed in utter silence.

The death of Dr. Faz Jahar was an accident. Cee became quite passionate trying to convince Ethan, who hadn't questioned the point, of the truth of this. Perhaps the escape might have gone better if they hadn't tried to destroy the laboratory and bring the four new children with them. It had complicated things. But Janine had insisted that none be left behind. When she and Terrence were made to sit in more frequently on more intensive interrogations of political prisoners, Cee gave up arguing that part of the plan with her.

If only Jahar hadn't tried to save his notes and gene cultures, he wouldn't have gone up with the bomb. If only the little children hadn't panicked and cried out, the guard might not have spotted them; if only they hadn't tried to run, he might not have fired. If only Terrence and Janine had chosen a different route, a different planet, a different city, different identities, in which to lose themselves.

The coolness of Cee's recitation froze altogether, his voice going flat, drained of emotion and self. He might have been denouncing the past decisions of some figure of ancient history, instead of his own, except that he began to rock, unconsciously, in cadence with his words. Ethan found his foot tapping along, and stilled it.

If only he had not left the apartment that afternoon to pick a little money off the spacers at cards down by the shuttleport docks and get groceries. If only he had arrived back a little earlier, and Captain Rau a little later. If only Janine had not gambled her life against Captain Rau's nerve disruptor to warn him. If only. If only. If only.

Cee discovered the altered consciousness of the berserker within himself in the battle to keep her body, every cell harboring the genetic secret, from falling back into Millisor's hands. It was a full day before Cee was able to get her corpse cryogenically frozen, much too long to beat brain-death even if there had been no disruptor damage.

He hoped anyway. All his will was focused now on the single obsession of making as much money as he could as quickly as possible. Terrence Cee, who had embraced a near-honest poverty for the sake of Janine's scruples while she lived, now plumbed the twisted uses of his power to their limits to amass the wealth needed to serve her corpse. Enough for the passage of a man and a heavy cyro-carton to the laboratories of Jackson's Whole where, it was whispered, enough money could buy anything.

But even a great deal of money could not buy life back from that death. Alternatives were gently suggested. Would the honored customer perhaps wish a clone made of his wife? A copy could be produced which even the most expert could not tell from the original. He would not even have to wait seventeen years for the copy to grow to maturity; things could be speeded up amazingly. The copy's personality could even be recreated with a surprising degree of verisimilitude, for the right price -- perhaps even improved upon, were there aspects of the original not quite to the honored customer's taste. The clone herself would not know the difference.

“All I needed to get her back,” said Cee, “was a mountain of money and the ability to convince myself that lies were truth.” He paused. “I had the money.”

Cee was silent for a long time. Ethan stirred uneasily, embarrassed as a stranger in the presence of death.

“Not to be pushy or anything,” he prodded at last, “but I trust you were about to explain the connection of all this with the order for 450 live human ovarian cultures Athos sent to Bharaputra Laboratories?” He smiled winningly, hoping that Terrence Cee was not about to clam up just before the pay-off.

Cee glanced at Ethan sharply, and rubbed his forehead and temples in unconscious frustration. In a little while he answered, “Athos's order came into the genetics section of Bharaputra Labs while I was going around and around with them about Janine. I'd never heard of the planet before. It sounded so strange and distant to me -- I thought, if only I could get there, maybe I could lose Millisor and my past forever. After Janine's remains were --” he swallowed painfully, his eyes flinching away from Ethan's, “were cremated, I left Jackson's Whole and started on a roundabout route designed to bury my trail. I lined up a job here to give me a cover identity while I waited for the next ship to Athos.

“I got here five days ago. Out of pure habit, I checked the transients' register for Cetagandan nationals. And found Millisor had been set up here for three months as an art and artifacts broker. I couldn't imagine how I'd spotted him before he spotted me, until I maneuvered close enough to read him. He'd pulled everyone off transient surveillance to hunt for you and Okita. They're at least a week behind in covering the exits, and with one man short they're going to be a long time catching up. I believe I owe you more than one thank you, Doctor. What did you do with Okita, anyway?”

Ethan refused to be diverted. “What did you have Bharaputra Laboratories do to Athos's order?” He experimented with giving Cee a stern and fishy stare.

Cee moistened his lips. “Nothing. Millisor just thinks I did. I'm sorry it got him all wound up.”

“I'm not quite as dense as I appear,” said Ethan gently. Cee made a vague I-never-suggested-it gesture. “I happen to have independent information that Bharaputra's top genetics team spent two months assembling an order that could have been put together in a week.” He glanced around at the tiny, sparse room. “I also note that you appear to be minus a mountain of money.” Ethan gentled his voice still further. “Did you have them make an ovarian culture from your wife's remains, instead of having her cloned, when you realized cloning could not bring back what was essential in her? And then bribe them to slip the culture into our order, meaning to follow it on to Athos?”

Cee twitched. His mouth opened; he finally whispered, “Yes, sir.”

“Complete with the gene complex for this pineal mutation?”

“Yes, sir. Unaltered.” Cee stared at the floor. “She liked children. She was beginning to dare to want them, when we thought we were safe, before Rau caught up with us the final time. It was the last thing -- the last thing I could do for her. Anything else would have merely been for myself. Can you see that, sir?”

Ethan, moved, nodded. At that moment he would have cheerfully decked any Athosian fundamentalist who dared to argue that Cee's tragic fixation upon his forbidden female could have no honor in it. He trembled at his own radical emotion. And yet, something did not add up. He almost had it...

The door buzzer blatted.

They both jumped. Cee's hand checked his jacket for some hidden weapon. Ethan merely paled.

“Does anyone know you're here?” Cee asked.

Ethan shook his head. But he had promised this young man the protection of Athos, such as it was. “I'll answer it,” he volunteered. “You, er -- cover me,” he added as Cee started to object. Cee nodded, and slipped to one side.

The door hissed open.

“Good evening, Ambassador Urquhart.” Elli Quinn, framed in the aperture, beamed at him. “I heard the Athosian Embassy might be in the market for security guards -- soldiers -- an intelligence corps. Look no further, Quinn is here, all three in one. I'm offering a special discount on daring rescues to any customer who places his order before midnight. It's five minutes till,” she added after a moment. “You going to invite me in?”

“You again,” groaned Ethan. He gave Commander Quinn a malignant glower as her exact words -- his exact words -- registered. “Where'd you plant the bug, Quinn?”

“On your credit chit,” she answered promptly. “It was the one item you slept with.” She rocked on her toes, and cocked her head to peer around Ethan's shoulder. “Won't you introduce me to your new friend? Pretty please?”

Ethan bleated under his breath.

“Exactly,” Quinn nodded. “And I must say you're the best stalking-goat I ever ran. The way troubles flock to you is just astonishing.”

“I thought you had no use for -- ah -- queers,” said Ethan coldly.

She grinned evilly. “Well, now, don't take that too much to heart. To tell the truth, I was starting to wonder just how I was ever going to shift you out from under my bed. I was really very pleased with your initiative.”

Ethan's lip curled, but until she took her booted foot off the door groove the safety seals would refuse to close. He stepped aside with what grace he could choke up.

Terrence Cee's right hand smoothed his jacket, tensely. “Is she a friend?”

“No,” said Ethan curtly.

“Yes,” Commander Quinn nodded vigorously, turning her best smile on the new target.

Cee, Ethan noted irritably, showed the same silly startlement that all galactic males displayed upon their first encounter with Commander Quinn; but to Ethan's relief he seemed to recover far more quickly, his eyes jumping from her face to her holster to her boots and other likely weapons check-points. Quinn's eyes mapped Cee's inventory of her against Cee himself, and crinkled smugly in the knowledge of where to look for his weapons. Ethan sighed. Was the mercenary woman always destined to be one step ahead of them?

The doorseals hissed shut and Quinn seated herself with her hands resting demurely on her knees, away from whatever arsenal she carried. “Tell this nice young man who I am, Ambassador Doctor Urquhart.”

“Why?” Ethan grumped.

“Oh, c'mon. You owe me a favor, after all.”

“What!” Ethan inhaled in preparation for fully expressing his outrage, but Quinn went on.

“Sure. If I hadn't primed my cousin Teki to ease you on out of quarantine you'd still be hung up in there with no ID, legal prisoner of the handwashers. And you and Mr. Cee here would never have met.”

Ethan's jaw snapped shut. “Introduce yourself,” he finally fumed.

She gave him a gracious nod and turned to Cee, her studied ease not quite concealing an intent excitement. “My name is Elli Quinn. I hold the rank of Commander in the Dendarii Free Mercenary Fleet, and the post of a field agent in the Fleet intelligence section. My orders were to observe Ghem-colonel Millisor and his group and discover their mission. Thanks largely to Ambassador Urquhart here, I have finally done so.” Her eyes sparked satisfaction.