The Ramal Extraction (19 page)

“When you must make one hand take the place of two, you either learn a new method, or you cannot compete.

“My teacher—
Stark
masc, call him Ess—developed a
sinuous kind of circularity in his upper body that allowed him to block and strike together. He could whip his single arm fast and hard, using his hips to generate speed and power, and the result was an unconventional system opponents either did not expect, nor could match if they did see it coming. And the stub of his other arm had uses opponents did not expect, as well.

“Ess never used his handicap as an excuse. He considered himself the equal of or better than any Vastalimi, and he won many fights against those who were bigger, stronger, and possessed of two good arms.”

“What happened to him?”

“His final fight was against three attackers. He died from his wounds. So did two of the three, with the third left maimed.

“There are things that one walks away from,” Kay said. “But when one chooses to stand? One seeks to fight like a
gmiza
, all out, no thoughts of defeat or death. Or like a one-armed Vastalimi who turned a handicap into an asset. That’s how a Vastalimi fighter thinks. No hesitation, no qualms, move until you prevail or you cannot move anymore, whichever comes first.”

Jo nodded. Good to know.

Formentara was in hir augmentation trance when Jo arrived, hands waving back and forth in a sensor-hula over hir console.

Jo had seen this often enough to know it was better to let it run its course, so she sat and began to mentally review the operations so far. One needed to revisit tactics, to see if there were things that could have been done better, and there almost always were ways to improve. Even a small move left instead of right might make the difference between life and death; one needed to examine the process and consider. Better to learn from someone else’s fatal mistake…

“I’m done,” Formentara said. “Gone off into your own trance, I see.”

Jo looked up to see hir grinning. “XO’s work is never done,” Jo said.

“But you love it, so it’s not really work, is it?”

Jo returned hir grin. “You got me. So what’s up? Am I due for a balance?”

“Nope, your augs are in perfect sync, as of course they would be.”

“So…?”

“I have a new thing.”

Jo’s interest blossomed. Formentara was unrivaled when it came to biological augmentation. “You found it
here
? I thought you said this planet was the equivalent of the Stone Age.”

“I didn’t find it, I
created
it.”

“Really? Can I have it? Please?”

Zhe grinned. “This is why you are my favorite patient. Because you ask that before you even ask what it is.”

“You created it, I don’t need to ask.”

“Absolutely true, but still, I’m touched by your confidence. Okay, here’s the deal…”

Jo listened, and by the time Formentara was done telling her, her mouth was open in wonder. “Holy shit. When can I get it?”

“When are you free for an hour?”

“Now. How about now, is now good?”

Formentara laughed. “On the table.”

Deep into the augmatrix, Formentara shunted, adjusted, revised, retuned, and did hir dance among the hormones and viral moleculars and implants, a maestro conducting a complex symphony, every note important, the smallest gestures critical. This was hir realm, hir universe, hir reason to get up every day. A hair this way lay failure; a hair that way, genius, and it was a delicate juggling routine that could crash down in a heartbeat. Any decent augmentor could take a piece of off-the-shelf wetware and spin it up, make it work exactly as designed. There were a million keyboard players who could play Mozart’s music—but only
one
Mozart…

There, the shuttle of enzymes for hypothalamic registration; here, the adrenals rebalanced. There, the new battery
ignited; here, the redistribution of power on the afferent/efferent exchange. Eliminate those senescent dregs; reroute the output of those neurons.

Dance, dance, and dance again.

There was no sense of time in the augmentation flux, the flow could be a minute, an hour, an eon. It was as in-the-moment as zhe could be, and it never got old.

Formentara blinked and looked at hir system’s time sig. Fifty-six minutes.

That was excellent. Better than zhe expected.

Once again, zhe had gone into the Void and become, at least on a small scale, God. Time to wake Sims up and see if it worked. Zhe raised the oxy level and gave her a squirt of stimulant.

“Jo.”

“I’m getting dressed, Mum, I’ll be down in a minute!”

“Jo.”

Sims blinked up at her. Focused. “Ah. How did it go?”

“Perfectly.”

“Can I try it?”

“That would be good.”

Jo sat up.

Once she had calmed her rage, Kay was left with a question. She went to Cutter Colonel’s office.

“A few moments of your time?” she said.

“Come on in.”

She sat on the hard chair in front of his desk and considered her approach. She was not an expert in human communications though she was more adept than most of her kind. How best to begin so as not to sound as if she were challenging her leader?

“You are wondering how we located you after you were taken,” he said, cutting to the heart of the matter.

That surprised her. “Indeed. I was not followed from the
base. My com was left at the scene of the attack, and thus of no use. It is possible that cameras recorded the vehicle and that was somehow tracked, but that seems unlikely.”

“You have an internal tracker,” he said. “Surreptitiously administered and inert until remotely triggered.”

Her immediate reaction was a flash of anger that threatened to erupt into an attack. She held herself in check. He was her leader. “The Vastalimi do not hold with such devices.”

“I know.”

“And yet you had it done in spite of that.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“The end in this case justifies the means.”

“I had the encounter under control.”

“So you did. We did not know that. You are a valuable employee. We would prefer to keep you alive.”

“Was this not my choice?”

“Yes and no.”

“Explain.”

“You signed a waiver when you contracted with CFI.”

“I do not recall that the contract specified I was to be given such a thing.”

“It was worded very carefully and unlikely you would have noticed. A reference to another lettered and numbered reference: ‘Pursuant to Subsection Alpha-Theta Seven, the corporation reserves the right to employ such technology as specified in Codex Delta for the health maintenance and welfare of its employees.’”

“I thought that referred to medical treatment in case of illness or injury.”

“That’s what you were supposed to think. It’s buried in the fine print list of devices, and IDed only by a model number.”

“So you legally had the right to do this.”

“Yes.”

“But it was a deliberate, devious ploy to subvert Vastalimi objections.”

“It was.” He paused. “You are one of us, Kay. A solider, a warrior, as much a member of the unit as anybody. We don’t let our people die if we can help it, nor go missing without some recourse. We would have spent as much time and energy as necessary to find you, and that would have subverted our primary mission to some degree. Better that we knew where to look.”

“I see. I understand your position if I do not agree with it.”

“I thought you would.”

“When the contract expires, if we renegotiate it, that clause will be removed, or I will not endorse it. Our association will end.”

“Okay.”

“And I will have the tracker removed. If our medic will not do it, I will find one who will. Along with any other devices I may have hidden within me.”

“All right. I understand.”

She stood. “You do not. You think this is some superstitious alien taboo, that there is no valid reason for the Vastalimi to routinely refuse much of what humans consider benign medical technology.”

He didn’t say anything, which she took as verification of her statement.

“It is impossible to explain to one who is not of us, but it is as much a part of our psychology and spirituality as your innate curiosity. It speaks to who we as a people
are
, and how we feel about ourselves and our place in the cosmos. You do not have to understand it, but it will be respected.”

He nodded.

She left.

After she was gone, Gramps came in. “How’d she take it?”

“I’m still alive. There was a moment when I wondered if I might not continue to be.”

Gramps chuckled.

Jo stood on her right foot, her left tucked against her supporting leg just above the knee, her eyes shut.

“Five minutes,” Formentara said. “That’s enough. Try the hop.”

Jo nodded. She bent her supporting knee slightly, pushed off and lifted a few centimeters above the floor. In the air, she switched feet, put her left down, landed in balance, brought her right foot to rest on the left leg.

All with her eyes still closed.

Not even a wobble.

“Wow!” she said.

“You think?” Formentara laughed. Zhe was pleased, Jo could tell, and why wouldn’t zhe be? This was a big deal, this new aug.

SPK, Formentara called it.

Somatic Proprioceptive Kinetics.

Anybody with even moderate physicality could stand on one foot for a few minutes. But close their eyes? A fit, trained person of twenty-five might manage forty or fifty seconds. The older you got, the less you could do. At her age, thirty seconds would be unusually good. A woman of sixty? The average was seven seconds; at seventy? Four seconds.

Jo had done
five minutes
, and not a tremble. That was amazing. As was the in-air switch. Her balance was perfect, and she felt it.

Not that there was a lot of call for standing on one foot in the dark, but that was only the tip of the iceberg.

Jo was aware of her entire body, what was where, how
gravity worked on it, and what she could do. She could freeze in midstep, knew exactly how much space was between her and the walls, the ceiling, Formentara, and every stick of furniture in the room, even with her vision off-line.