Koban: The Mark of Koban (57 page)

“Carson, I’ll have to ask you to put your
movie on hold. I need to check your vitals, tap a few places, ask and answer
questions, and give you a quick brain scan. I have a lot of other house calls
to make today.”

She checked blood pressure, heart rate, lungs,
eyes, ears, nose and throat. After a gentle manipulation of limbs, poking a few
muscles, asking what he felt, she placed the small adjustable helmet on his
head and started a scan. As an image appeared on a screen inside the lid of the
box, she manipulated, rotated and zoomed in on sections, and read out the data
the new software program extracted from what it detected.

“Carson, your new neural connections are
forming extremely well in your brain, well ahead of our expectations. However, the
new carbon fiber muscle tissue will take a while longer to complete
infiltrating all of your muscles. If you send signals to the muscles along the ‘fast
path’ nerves right now, you will be sending motor impulses from your brain that
are currently terminated in human only muscle tissue, without the proper nerve
receptors. That causes a burning sensation. Try to focus on the slower nerve
pathways for the remainder of this month. We know it can be done, because even
the pigs and goats learned, without an explanation.”

“Uh, OK.”
That wasn’t a very brilliant
reply
, he thought.
I’ll ask a question.

“If the superconductor nerves don’t connect to
the new muscle receptors yet, then why do I feel the burning in the exact place
where that muscle is?” He had one muscle in mind, but wasn’t about to name the
one that burned last night.

“That’s a pertinent and perceptive question.
The sensation really only exists in your brain, where virtually all of our
physical sensations are processed. The brain’s mapping of our body tells the
brain where on our anatomy that sensation originated. It already has the map,
and if there’s a short circuit, it
thinks
the pain comes from the
appropriate location, when actually it happens in the brain. It’s a bit like
phantom pains and itches we might feel if we lost a leg and the missing foot
still seems to need scratching. You can feel that until the leg regrows. Your
phantom burning will end when your new muscles and superfast nerve receptors
are joined.”

He was glad she didn’t use the term “imaginary
pain” like Aunt Maggi had. It might be phantom pain, but it damn well wasn’t
imaginary!

He wanted a bit of confirmation. “So focusing
consciously on the older slower human nerve sensations will avoid triggering
the burning?” He’d sure try that.

“In principle, yes, but that’s a hard thing to
do in practice, I think. How do your joints feel, and particularly the leg
bones, when you stand?”

“Not bad. A dull ache is always there, but not
intense.”

The bone changes caused general aching all the
time, but because there were fewer nerve receptors involved, that ache stayed
dull and was tolerable. Aldry gave him a few words of encouragement, talked
with his mom a bit, and left for her next house call. After watching the movie,
he returned to his personal “cave.”

Troglodyte!
I’ll
bet they thought I didn’t know what that meant.

At times the tingling, itching, and burning were
too distracting to sleep. He spent many late hours talking with Ethan, Arlene,
Jaylene, and other friends that had the same sleep problems. They seldom saw
one another for the first month of the change, since that encouraged physical
activity that could “cause discomfort.” A charming euphemism that meant your
ass, arms, legs, or whatever, was on fire!

It was another sleepless late night com call
to Arlene Parkinfem that convinced him to try the concentration and focus
technique he had practiced after Aunt Aldry had left that morning. He believed
he had that method down now. He was sure he could do what a goat or pig had
done.

In their wandering conversation, Arlene reminded
him teasingly of the “kissing and touching” that had followed his presenting
her with the first ever seen blue colored, two-foot long whiteraptor arm
feathers. That was a
very
fond and stimulating memory for Carson. As
soon as they finished talking, he tried his new technique. Only to discover
that certain emotionally laden thoughts were not subject to “focus” and
clinical “concentration.”

 Hence, the intense burning ‘muscle’ pain he
caused himself again tonight. He needed to think of something else for a
relaxation exercise. Such as how he got those feathers.

They came from an adolescent raptor from early
last winter, born blue, and which had not turned full white yet. It was only
fifteen feet long, or else he and Ethan would never have tried to draw it
closer to the thirty-foot wall, urging it to leap uselessly up at them, where
they could grab at feathers when it extended its grasping small forearms. In
their imaginative retelling of the event, the creature had grown considerably
larger, and the feathery proof had garnered him his first near sexual
experience with Arlene that evening. Ethan had used his share of feathers to
score points with Jaylene Cotes.

The next afternoon, alerted by Mister Rigson,
their old elementary school teacher, his Dad investigated the source of the
blue colored raptor feathers that two girls were flaunting to their high school
friends. He heard the story behind them, so he and Ethan’s Dad flew out to the
wall to check security, taking their heavy rifles. They returned to tell their
sons that one-day old tracks of a large female raptor were all around the base
of that wall now. They had missed dear old mom raptor by a just little bit.
Everyone knew that a determined big female whiteraptor could scale those walls,
with the right incentive. The boy’s peashooter Krall pistols would have been useless
if she had made it over.

Ahh. Thinking of his Dad’s reaction had calmed
the burning sensation. So…, that long endless lecture finally offered
some
benefit.

****

The second month was a huge improvement, pain
wise. One week into the second month and Carson, along with the other
forty-nine first week candidates felt aches, but no burning. The second fifty
candidates, a week behind, were happy to hear that. The fifty from the week
after them were ecstatic, and so forth back to those that were only now
entering the painful burning phase. The order of processing the kids was by
date of birth, fifty per week, and Carson was four days the oldest, just ahead
of Ethan.

Of the three hundred twelve Prime City kids
eligible for the mods, only nine had opted to delay. Some for family vacation
reasons, some for flaky sounding reasons that were likely based on apprehension
and fear, or they had family pressure. One girl had turned sixteen last week,
and asked to receive the mods for her Sweet Sixteen Birthday gift. It was
quickly turning into a coming of age event for the Prime City Koban born.

For the two months of transformation, Carson
was spending as much time with Kobalt as he could. However, the cat had found a
mate in the northern pride. He was frequently gone overnight, or for a couple
of days.

Actually, it was his third mate in the last six
years. Ripper males were fickle, and drifted from female to female after one or
two seasons. He had sired seven cubs; or rather, they
had
been cubs. All
but two were now independent of their mothers, who did the primary raising.
Carson was introduced to them all, but he had not been able to grow as close as
he had hoped. It was due to the wild influence of their mothers, and the images
they grew up sharing, taken from the pride’s long history. Humans were recent
allies, formerly prey, and humans had hunted rippers for vengeance. The latter
was hard for the wild rippers to understand, and wasteful. They had done
nothing wrong, and killing prey that you ate wasn’t wrong.

Kobalt and Kit had become adept at
understanding human images and translating concepts from wild rippers. That
process worked in both directions actually, supplementing confusing human
images with other pictures that helped explain our thoughts, and soften those
that felt too harsh or unreasonable to a wild ripper.

Kit was more selective than Kobalt, and had
mated only twice, bearing twins both times, as her ripper mother had done. She
had delivered her litters with her “mother” and “aunt” by her side, in her den.
Carson was close by with Ethan the first time, but both had to leave when it
grew too tearful for the then fourteen year olds. Aunt Marlyn and his mother were
crying and blubbering something awful. The cubs were adorable, both female, and
Thad and Marlyn were planning to let them bond with Bradley (he got Kayla) and
Danner (got Kally).

Unless Kobalt could convince a female to join
him and live with the human pride, it would be difficult to have his cubs grow up
with humans. Ripper tradition was that most males joined and left prides,
eventually leaving the one in which they were born, in order to mate with nonrelatives.
Females generally stayed with their birth pride. One possibility, offered in
negotiation with three prides that hunted near Prime City, concerned orphaned
cubs if a mother died. If there were no home-pride females able to take them, they
asked if the human pride could raise them.

Unlike Earth lions, ripper prides were more
protective of cubs when a new male suitor came courting an unmated female with
cubs. The suitor may not hunt for them or teach the cubs to hunt, but he would
seldom try to kill them. That difference from lions was probably a function of
frill contacts making the prides more strongly bonded. Although, i
nfanticide
did sometimes
happen, as Kit had learned in memory images from the wild prides.

With Kobalt to provide frill contact, Carson
found that the cat was able to help him sort the double signals his brain was
receiving much sooner than his peers. Ethan reported the same effect with Kit.

Both boys found that the frill contact was
growing much more vivid, and the rate of flow of information was accelerating.
The cats indicated that their normally “slow” human brothers were rapidly
becoming fast thinkers. It was fun for the cats to exchange ideas as fast with
their “siblings” as they did with each other, and with other wild rippers.

It was an amusing revelation for the boys to
learn that the family pets had considered their “parents” and “siblings”
lovable, but slow-witted as well as slow moving. They decided to save that
discovery for some future joint family gathering, when they could “gently”
explain to their parents the “facts.” Then offer to do the heavy thinking for
them in the future. That should spark a fun exchange.

****

By the end of the second month of the Koban
gene modifications for the first week’s fifty candidates, all of the kids had
completed the expected tissue and bone growth, and the organic superconductor
nervous system finally had links between the brain and the greatly enhanced
muscles. The next month or two would involve their learning to shift mental
focus from the older nervous system to the new, and to control the stronger
muscles without exerting excessive force.

Smacking yourself hard, when merely reaching up
to pick your nose, led to bloody noses. Not surprisingly, this happened mostly
with boys. Everyone became extra cautious around the teenagers as they started
leaving their enforced isolation. They had pent up boundless energy that was
often under poor control. However, there were two notable, and initially
mysterious, exceptions.

Carson and Ethan displayed far more control of
their actions right from the start. They weren’t close to their maximum
physical strength yet, because that would take months of strenuous exercise, which
they were now capable of exerting. Yet they were moving much more smoothly and
confidently than the other forty-eight candidates from the first week were.

Tet and Maggi had heard some rumbles that
Carson and Ethan had received some sort of special “treatment.” People had
noticed the boy’s advanced skills with the new modifications. Knowing that the
special treatment allegation was false did nothing to dispel the rumors, or
explain the differences. They decided they needed to do something before they
had a problem.

To assure a free and open discussion, Maggi
invited the first fifty candidates, and their parents, to meet in the old Krall
fighting arena. Half of that level had become a hydroponics section, the other
half was now an exercise area for residents, and there were two partitions for
school use, divided between primary school and high school. The meeting would
use the exercise area.

There was room for three times the hundred and
fifty people that came. The exercise equipment from multiple derelict passenger
ships was in the room, with a padded floor on one side for tumbling, yoga,
acrobatics, martial arts, boxing, wrestling, and even hand-to-hand combat
practice. There was a weight lifting section, and a full range of exercise
machines to develop any muscle or groups of muscles that needed help in meeting
Koban’s heavy gravity demands.

The room was familiar to most of the residents
of Prime City. This level had been off limits when the Krall were here, but
there had been a smaller area for humans to exercise. That was where those
facing combat to the death with the Krall had worked out. Later, the exercise
habits continued even after the Krall left, and with more people, they needed a
larger area.