Saving Mars (25 page)

Speaking to himself the physician muttered, “This is exactly the sort of ineptitude that led to yesterday’s tragedies.”

As the elevator plunged, so did Jess’s heart, feeling heavier with every added floor away from her brother.

The doctor led her into a large room. A glance across the room revealed people dressed like herself, many staring into the distance, eyes vacant. Some slept. Jess felt uneasy in the large and open space with its over-tall Terran ceiling. The chairs were broken into small groupings making her think of a cluster of rooms that should have walls but didn’t. Potted plants were scattered with the careless abandon of those dwelling on a water-planet. It was an utterly alien setting, precisely calculated to add to her unease.

The physician, pulling Jess with him to the front of a queue, demanded to see the floor manager. Beeps, whirs, and blips sounded from the nurses’ station, echoing the noise inside Jessamyn’s earpiece.

“And get someone from security over here,” added the doctor. “I want a chip scan on this fourbody.”

She felt dread lodge in her stomach—how would she rescue Eth if she couldn’t get free herself? Jessamyn swallowed. She could only solve one problem at a time; it was the same as flying an uncooperative craft.
One problem at a time
.

Several people in the room were now casting unfriendly glares at the line-cutting physician, and Jess took advantage of their collective ill will to demand that he unhand her. To her amazement, he complied.

A woman approached Jess from behind the nurse’s station. “I’m Nurse Yoko,” she said to Jess, smiling. “I’m just going to get your vitals.”

“Does that require my consent?” asked Jess.

Still smiling, Nurse Yoko replied. “Yes, dear, of course.”

“I’m withholding it, then,” said Jess. “No consent. No vitals.”

The nurse looked puzzled. “I guess we can wait a minute. Let’s start with who you are and what you’re here for today, then, shall we? Cast removal, is it?”

“Obviously,” said Jessamyn. “I need some fresh air, if you’ll excuse me.”

The nurse gently blocked Jess’s exit path. “I’m sorry, but there’s a physician with twelfth floor clearance who’s insisting we get some ID for you first.”

At that moment, a member of hospital security arrived beside Jess and the nurse.

Holy Ares,
thought Jessamyn.
Here goes.

“Ma’am, I’m going to need an ID scan,” said the security officer.

Jess held her cast-encased arm before the officer. “Be my guest,” she said.

The security officer frowned and returned to the desk.

Nurse Yoko said, “You’re a lefty, are you? Me, too.”

The security officer returned after conferring with the physician. “Who is your doctor, ma’am?” he asked Jess.

She fumbled. “I … I can’t remember the young man’s name.”

The nurse spoke in a rapid undertone to the officer. “Memory issues are common among fourbodies.” She turned to Jess. “How about we make you comfortable until we can get someone from your family to vouch for your identity?”

“I live alone,” said Jess.

“In that case,” said the nurse, “I’m afraid we’re going to need to set you up somewhere until that cast is ready to come off.”

“I’ll wait outside, thank you,” said Jess, turning to make a break for it.

The security officer was on her instantly, his grip like iron. “You’re not going anywhere until we get a confirmation that you belong in this hospital,” he said.

“I’m sorry, dear,” added the nurse. “But you know what it’s been like since the attacks yesterday. Let’s just get you some place comfortable. When is your cast due for removal? Do you remember that much?”

Jess felt a bead of sweat sliding down her back, a sensation entirely new and just as entirely unwelcome. “I’m not certain,” she said, playing for time. She remembered Pavel’s words that the cast could come off in the evening. That meant she had several hours in which to manage her own escape and plan for her brother’s.

“All right-y, then,” said the nurse. “Let’s get you settled in.”

The nurse led the security officer, with Jess in tow, down a corridor and into a small examination room.

But when the officer attempted to enter the room, the nurse seemed to swell to twice her size. “No,” she said to the secure. “You will wait outside. This is a hospital, not a military zone.”

The officer grunted and remained outside the room.

Nurse Yoko apologized. “One day and the whole world’s turned upside down. I knew we’d have trouble with secures. You give them a centimeter and they try to take a kilometer. No regard for patient privacy.” She smiled at Jess. “Fortunately, this is my floor, and I have a
high
regard for patient privacy.”

“Hmmph,” grunted Jess. “Thanks.”

The nurse fluffed a pillow upon a small bed. “They’re asking for permission to monitor in-room conversations, if you can believe it.” She shook her head as though this would be the ultimate violation of patient rights. “Can I get you anything? Food? Something to drink?”

“I’m fine,” Jess lied.

“Okay, then, I’ll be back to check on you as often as I can. You can call for assistance right here,” she said, indicating a screen panel. “And if you see the monitor light on your cast switch from red to green, you let me know right away, okay?”

Jess nodded.

The nurse smiled one last time and left, scolding the security officer on the far side of the door as it swung shut with a dull thud. When closed, the door blocked all sound, including Nurse Yoko’s berating of the officer.

Jess stared at her surroundings. No window. One door. A basin into which it appeared water might collect. A
sink
, she recalled. And a bed. Jess crawled up on top of the rather high and narrow bed and buried her face in the pillow. It smelled faintly of peroxide, of home. When the tears began a moment later, Jessamyn let them fall. She had failed.

Chapter Twenty-Five

DEFERENTIAL TREATMENT

Pavel scanned into the exam-floor lobby alongside two hundred or so others who’d turned eighteen yesterday. A man dressed in a teach-suit approached Pavel, singling him out from the crowd as it shuffled forward.

“Mr. Brezhnaya-Bouchard,” he said, dipping his head, “If you will step to one side, someone will be right with you to escort you to your exam screen. It is such an honor, sir.”

Looking around, Pavel determined that no one else was getting this special treatment. He frowned. When his escort arrived, she chattered about high profile guests providing possible disturbances to other firsties.

“We want to offer everyone an equal chance to do their best in a distraction-free environment. I’m sure you understand.” She smiled.

“Sure,” muttered Pavel. He might despise the deference, but he had no wish to distract others on such an important day.

His own video screen sat in a smaller room off to one side from the main exam room. From the window next to him, Pavel could look down over the pool beside which he and Jessamyn had traced the constellations last night. He glanced skyward and his resolve hardened. He would take this exam with his new goal in mind: he wanted to help Marsians, and that meant a political career path in civil service, not medicine.

As he sat, trying to think about the exam and not the girl from Mars—
Mars!
—his mind raced, replaying the last twelve hours. He’d always planned to be a doctor, but in the past half-day of his life, everything had changed and now all he could think of was a red-haired girl from another world and how he might bring their two planets together once more.

The video screen in front of him flared to life. A pleasant voice directed him to scan in. He felt an eagerness to answer the questions—to begin the realignment of his new goals with his new future. The first question appeared, asking him what he would be most likely to do in the event he came upon persons requiring assistance. That was easy:
offer assistance while telling others to call emergency services.

He flexed his fingers and glanced down at the pool once again. A second question appeared, asking him whether the statement, “
I enjoy helping others and I am good at it,
” was true or false for him. Clicking “True,” he advanced to the third question which asked him to indicate which of several dozen journals he followed.

Pavel frowned. Why ask questions that could easily be verified? The examiners had access to the minutiae of Pavel’s life including where he spent vacations, what tooth cleanser he used,
and
the name of every vid-journal he’d ever subscribed to. He checked the boxes beside
MEDICINE TODAY
and
GENETICS DAILY
.

The fourth question asked Pavel whether, within a surgery room, he could best imagine himself as a surgeon’s assistant or as a surgeon. The question seemed innocuous enough, but Pavel didn’t like the ways in which each question thus far seemed tilted toward a field in which he no longer had interest.

He selected “surgeon” as more likely to indicate that he saw himself in leadership roles rather than supportive roles.

The fifth question seemed to return the inquiries to more neutral territory: Did Pavel prefer tasks which were repetitive and predictable or those which provided challenge and surprise. He shook his head and chose
challenges and surprises
. But he didn’t like the surprise awaiting him on the following screen.

Congratulations. You have been awarded a medical apprenticeship at New Kelen Hospital where you will train for a career in consciousness transfer.

He stared at the screen, first in shock. Then, outrage followed, and he mouthed a single word.

“Lucca.”

Chapter Twenty-Six

CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY

Jessamyn allowed herself to cry for a long, long while. It was shameful, wasting so much water. But she didn’t care. She had no idea how to rescue her brother, much less how to find and rescue Harpreet or the Captain, and she felt alone and completely out of her depth. Jess may have been Mars’s best pilot, but she had no training in stealing bodies from a secure facility.

A hospital orderly brought food to her room after an hour had passed. The smells assaulted her and she recognized the creamy scent of butter, but she found she’d lost her appetite for Terran foods. Ignoring the tray of food, she reached into her pocket, grasping the slippery foil wrapper of a nutrient bar. She was feeling the effects of sleep-deprivation, and she knew it would be foolhardy to add
hungry
to the mix.

Peeling back the copper ration-wrapper, she ate mechanically.

The food worked to warm her belly and the walls enclosing her offered comfort as well. Earth was too full of open spaces. She thought maybe she understood her brother a bit better, if in reverse. He reacted poorly to small spaces; she realized a slight level of unease had settled in her simply because she had been denied the comfort of low ceilings since arriving.

She leaned back against the wall. It vibrated slightly—constantly—like the walls of the Galleon. She closed her eyes so that she could arrange her options before her like one of Ethan’s collections, but fatigue overwhelmed her, and in the small room—exhausted and insulated from all outside noise—she fell into a profound sleep.

~ ~ ~

Pavel Brezhnaya-Bouchard had never felt so angry. He considered simply never returning home as he haunted Budapest’s avenues and alleys for the next several hours. He considered trying to find the girl from Mars—maybe she’d let him leave with her. This idea, he eventually rejected, reasoning that if he went missing, Lucca would call out the Red Squadron to find him. Pavel couldn’t risk drawing the Terran military onto Jessamyn’s trail. His hours of walking did little to calm him, only increasing his outrage over what his aunt had done. In the end, he hopped back on his hover-bike and sped home in order to rail at his aunt.

Seeing Lucca’s palatial residence for the first time as a place he was about to
leave
instead of as a place he called home, he felt a flush of shame for his aunt’s extravagance. The ostentatious building served as a perfect example of the basic difference between them: Pavel saw others as his equals; Lucca saw others as her inferiors, to be used in ways that benefited her or her agendas. The palatial dwelling? It reminded others, before they’d even caught sight of the woman who lived inside, that Lucca was wealthy and powerful. It begged the question, “Can you really afford to pit yourself against my will?”

“You can’t buy
me
,” growled Pavel as he parked his bike beside Lucca’s three luxurious travel-sedans.

He stormed inside, shouting for his aunt.

Lucca’s butler greeted Pavel. “Good morning, sir. I regret to tell you Chancellor Brezhnaya is sleeping and unavailable. May I offer you congratulations upon completing your examination?”

Pavel didn’t respond. Lucca’s servants were accustomed to being ignored. But then, despising himself for behaving like
her
, Pavel made a point of answering politely. “Thanks, Zussman.”

“Your aunt arrived back from Singapore only two hours ago,” said the butler. “She’s planned a dinner to celebrate with you when she awakens and will be accompanying you to the hospital this evening
herself
.” Zussman smiled. “Will there be anything else, sir?”

“No,” said Pavel.

He took the set of stairs leading to his suite of rooms. When he reached them, he scanned his wrist to gain access to a passageway connecting his rooms with his aunt’s sleeping quarters. It was something she’d set up years ago, when Pavel suffered nightmares. He hoped his chip would still open the passage. A door panel slid back and he smiled in grim satisfaction. One more example of his aunt’s tendency to forget things she’d done for Pavel once they were done.

Lucca Brezhnaya, Prime Chancellor of the Terran Central Government, arranged her morning wake-up calls to imitate the experience of re-bodying. She loved the moment of awakening as a newly thirty-six-year-old, and she’d repeated threebodying a number of times—often enough to have developed the particular habits of a connoisseur. For instance, she liked to begin her awakening—whether to a new day or a new body—to the sound of Tibetan bells. Upon awakening, she kept her eyes closed and flexed her fingers. This was the signal to her attendants to offer bowls of warm rosewater for her hands. The ritual continued with further ablutions until Lucca began her workday. These twenty minutes were stolen, in some sense, from other more profitable activities, but she found the trade-off acceptable.