Mutant Star (27 page)

“I’m telling you that there’s a marvelous opportunity here for you to advance professionally, with state-of-the-art equipment, doing the work you love.”

Julian stared at her. And as he did, the image of her in Hawkins’s arms came to him. But it wasn’t the echo of that old vision he’d seen so long ago in the lab. It was fresh, a recent memory. From Eva.

His mouth tightened. “I see things really have changed. You’re talking about professional concerns but not personal ones. Well, I don’t want to compete with Hawkins for you, Eva.”

“And I thought mutants respected telepathic privacy.”

He gave a sharp, angry laugh. “I didn’t spy on you. You were practically broadcasting. Loud and clear.” His fury left him cold, almost numb.

Eva’s cheeks were bright red. “Let’s try to leave personal considerations out of this for the time being. You’ve got to finish your dissertation. I’m still on faculty at UC. And I need your help.”

Julian could see that she desperately wanted him to say yes. Needed him aboard to keep the program moving. And not all of her motivations were purely professional. He sensed a deep ambivalence in her toward him. It only sharpened his desire to say no, tell her to go to hell. But what about his dissertation? If he quit now a whole year’s work was wasted.

“All right,” he said. “I’ll stay. But only until I finish my doctorate.”

***

The alarm went off sharply, three high beeps, three low.

Rick groaned and opened one eye. Purple twilight of an artificial dawn filled the room. Alanna sat up next to him in bed.

“Time for my shift,” she said, yawning.

He reached for her. “Don’t go. I can get you out of that, you know. I’ve got the pull.”

She gave him a half-disgusted look. “And then what would I do? Sit here and wait for you to come back from some meeting with Hawkins? Or to return from whatever private internal place you’ve been visiting? No thanks. I came up here to do more than sit around waiting for your attention.”

“You think I’m too busy?” He eyed her anxiously. “Am I neglecting you?”

“Maybe.” She eluded his hands, got out of bed, and disappeared into the bathroom.

He raised his voice so she could hear him over the running water—she had asked him not to use mind-speech with her before noon because it gave her a headache. “You know I’m trying to buy time for us, Alanna. To make the money now. Then we can go away.”

She walked out of the bathroom braiding her hair. “And so I should just put up and shut up?”

“No. No, I didn’t mean it that way.” He watched her dress, fighting the urge to draw her back to bed. “I just want you to understand.”

“Do you?” Clad in a black stretch suit, she faced him, hands on hips. “Understand what? Your changes? Forget it, Rick. I’ll never understand what’s happened to you. I don’t even want to try.” She paused by the door. “You scare me sometimes.”

“You’re the last person I want to scare,” he said. “Is it in bed? Am I too—”

“Oh, the sex is fine,” she said. “It’s the way you are out of bed. One minute you’re spaced out. The next, you’re laughing. I never know which Rick I’ll come back to when I get off shift.”

He held up his hands in helpless confusion. “But it’s the same me, Alanna. I really haven’t changed that much. I know I haven’t.”

“Sure,” she said. “Keep telling yourself that.” She shook her head. “Look, don’t worry about it. I’m late. See you this afternoon.”

“Yeah.” Rick watched the door slide closed behind her. She would come to understand. He would make her understand, somehow. He rolled over in bed and sank back down into a light sleep.

There were men in buff-colored uniforms crawling over scrubby ground. They had enormous laser rifles and rows of disruptor grenades strung across their backs. Rick knew suddenly that this was not a dream. He was in Asia, possibly Korea, three years in the future. He tried to get a better focus, but the vision shifted to a massive tanker on its side, leaking fuel off the Gulf of Aqaba. And soon. The vision was sharp and repetitive, almost like a tape loop. Cutting through it like a rainstorm against stone was a loud, subliminal whisper.

you are the promised one. you are the link. you
are our hope. you are the promised one. you will bring us back to the book. you are the link.

The message pounded Rick’s mind. Angrily, he subdued and ejected it. A repeating telepathic probe! Paula Byrne and her mutant witchery. It had to be. Where was she? He sent out a narrow-range scan that quickly located her three levels above him on the observation deck. She had been monitoring him.

Crazy old woman! Get out of my head!

But you must listen to me.

How would you like me to use my own version of subliminal suggestion on you? I could have you get on the next shuttle to the Moon and halfway there tell you to open the airlocks. You’d do it, too.

He amplified the message, showing her a vision of what he could do to her.

No, no. Please.

Her mindspeech was tinged with horror and fear.

Rick paused, taken aback by his own belligerence. He didn’t really mean what he had said just then. But his head hurt. Everybody was after him, wanting a piece of him.

I just want to be left alone, he thought. To figure out what and who I am now.

You are the next step …

Paula, if you don’t stop bugging me, I’ll toss you to Jupiter!
Rick swore aloud. He almost meant it. Damnable, intrusive old woman.
You’re lucky I’m tired, Paula. Getting you to commit suicide would take too much energy right now. So I suggest you leave under your own power. While you still can. And as a memento of our visit, I’m going to give you a little flare headache. It ought to clear up in an hour or two.

***

Paula Byrne lay back on her bunk, racked by blinding mental pain. She had been foolish, reckless even. In her eagerness and impatience, she’d gone too far. Young Akimura was far more difficult than she’d anticipated. Uncontrollable. Possibly dangerous.

She sat up slowly. Blinding colors danced at the perimeter of her vision, accompanied by jangling pain. The bedcovers bunched beneath her as she recoiled from the cacophony. She sat very still, and the tumult subsided.

Haltingly, she chanted for composure and freedom from pain. The noise faded, then grew, throwing horrid echoes around her head. The chants were useless. She needed neural dampers. But her supplies were in the bathroom. Too far to go. But the pain. Have to do it. Hurry.

Byrne put one foot on the floor, then the other. The room swirled around her as strange voices jabbered and shrieked. She tottered, started to fall, grabbed hold of a wallcushion, and half crawled toward the bathroom. Five more steps. Now two. She clung to the webbed handhold and rummaged through her bag until she found the small pack of hypos. Gasping with pain, she pressed two hypos to her arm. The chittering and shrieking faded, faded, and was gone.

Flee, she thought. You must leave. He’s too much for you. Perhaps he’s too much for anyone.

***

After breakfast, Ethan Hawkins made what he thought of as his daily rounds, from Burma to Tokyo, from New York to Frankfurt, checking in with his factories, his investors and advisers. The diamond market was down, biochemical futures were holding firm, and speculation in lunar real estate was rampant. Just wait until they opened up Mars, he thought. The Mars boom would dominate the beginning of the twenty-second century. With luck—and the help of Rick Akimura—Aria Corp. would be poised to benefit from that land rush. Satisfied, Hawkins nodded, checked his stock quotations one more time, and shut down the screen. All in all, a normal morning’s work.

He stretched, flexing his prosthetic arm, getting the kinks out of his shoulders. A walk was in order.

He took his private lift down to the gymnasium level and made his way out into the atrium, striding over the green carpeting, taking note that the bromeliads in the hall plantings required attention. Their pale green and white leaves were dusty, drab. Details, nobody kept their mind on details.

His wristscreen buzzed.

“Colonel Hawkins?”

“What is it, Leporello?”

“Random scanning of communications yielded some information that I thought might interest you.”

The image of a mutant woman with wild white hair and a pinched, frightened face appeared onscreen. Paula Byrne, the healer who had helped Rick Akimura. She wore what appeared to be an old blue pressure suit.

“Rita,” she said. “I wanted to speak to you before I left Hawkins’s Pavilion. I see now that Rick Akimura is the promised one.”

Hawkins slowed his pace, listening closely.

“Are you certain?” a female voice said.

A look of fear crossed Paula Byrne’s face. “He is the answered prayer, the one who will lead us into the new era. Rick Akimura is a fully enhanced mutant.”

“Leporello,” Hawkins said. “Hold.”

The image froze.

“When did this conversation take place?” Hawkins asked.

“Early this morning.”

“Is Paula Byrne still on the Pavilion?”

“No. She left on the first shuttle.”

“A shame. Proceed.”

Onscreen, Paula Byrne began to speak. “Yes, Sister,” she said. “He has every mutant ability you can imagine, and more. He can see into time, he can move between the ages. He is both telepath and telekinetic, powerful beyond our wildest dreams. He is the next step.”

“What shall we do?”

“I must think on this,” Byrne said. “I will talk with you when I return home.”

“Then I’ll await your call. Yours in the Book, Sister.”

“In the Book.” The screen went dark.

“End of transmission,” Leporello said. “Further instructions?”

“Nothing yet. Stand by,” Hawkins said.

In a jittery mood now, he paced along the upper level of the observation deck, oblivious to the condition of the flora. Enhanced mutants? What was all that about? The woman was crazy, obviously. Rick Akimura, a genetic freak? What had she called him? The promised one? The answered prayer? It was laughable. These pathetic people and their preposterous cults. Hawkins prided himself on his skepticism. He didn’t believe in the bogeyman, he didn’t believe in the Moon monster, and he certainly didn’t believe in the mutant promised one. But what if Rick were a genetic freak? The next step in mutancy, as Byrne claimed. That would be a rare commodity indeed. Worth thinking about that.

Suppose he really is what the woman says he is, Hawkins thought. Just suppose.

Hawkins walked swiftly back to his office.

“Colonel Hawkins,” Leporello said. “I was about to page you. Jasper Saladin is on screen one.”

Saladin’s thin, craggy face appeared above the holoscreen.

“Morning, Ethan,” he said. “I’ve got those figures you requested. Looks like we’re in for another big fad in gene splicing. Designer babies and all that.”

“Again? Well, it’ll be good for business, I suppose,” Hawkins said. Somewhere in the back of his head a bell was ringing. Genetic research. Gene splicing. Of course. Of course. He suddenly saw yet another way in which Rick Akimura could be of use.

“Jasper, what would you say if I told you that there is available a source of potent genetic material that could revolutionize the gene-splicing industry and give new meaning to the term self-improvement?”

Saladin frowned. “I’d say you were crazy. Regulations on this kind of research are stifling, to put it mildly.”

Hawkins smiled slyly. “On-world, in academic environments, yes. But not off-world. Not yet.”

“What are you saying?”

“You know what a boom the genetic self-improvement market has seen: growth regulation, insulin generation in diabetics, interferon generation to nip budding cancers and combat viral illnesses.”

Saladin nodded impatiently. “Of course. But you’re really talking about something outside of my field.”

“Just for the sake of discussion, Jasper, what would your reaction be if you had access to the genetic material of a truly superior individual? A mutant, let’s say, from whom you could gene-splice traits for telepathy, telekinesis, and so on.”

“I thought even mutant geneticists couldn’t splice in specific traits, yet. Besides, they’re not exactly generous with their research results. It’s taken a court order on more than one occasion to pry information out of them that helped save lives.”

“That’s true,” Hawkins said. “But we know enough about gene splicing to agree that a multitalented mutant’s plasm would confer a gift upon the recipient regardless of the mix of the skills. The chance of receiving a direct transfer of talent is good. And many people would pay a great deal for that chance.”

“And others would pay an equal amount to prevent them from doing it. This is dangerous territory, Ethan.”

“I know, I know,” Hawkins said. “I’ve read the accounts of the witch-hunts of the previous century. The public outcry against companies that were thought to be breeding monsters in their labs. We’ve still got to cope with a remnant of that paranoid antitech mentality today.”