Authors: Joel Shepherd
"Now everyone here is biotech, Sandy," said Doctor Li, as if reading her mind. "In fact, we've got probably the best biotech surgeons on the planet here in this room right now. You'll forgive us if we find it all more than a little fascinating ... but we're not here to study you, Sandy, we're just going to patch you up. The damage isn't great. You should make a full recovery. Now, if you have any questions at any time, about anything, just ask. Okay?"
"Okay," she whispered. Doctor Li gave her a gentle, reassuring pat on the head and regained his feet. "Ricey?"
"Right here." Leaning in close again, with the doctor resuming work.
"Don't leave me."
Vanessa smiled, hand in her hair again, a soft, comforting presence.
"Not a chance. No chance at all."
CHAPTER 19
At 10:16 the next morning, Katia Neiland walked into the private hospital ward. Sandy looked across in surprise, and lowered her paperback. The President walked unescorted across the sun-splashed floor, smiling at her.
"Hi," she said. Stopped by the bedside, a hand upon the visitor's chair.
"Hello." Weary eyed and fuzzy-headed, her voice remained at best a soft murmur. An eyebrow quirked in mild surprise, looking past the President toward the doorway. Then refocused with gradual, deliberate calm. "Where's your entourage?"
"Leashed in the corridor, sniffing nurses' backsides." Smiling in apparent good humour. "You two make a nice couple."
Sandy glanced across at Vanessa, who lay alongside on the broad hospital bed. Sleeping peacefully, brown curls strewn about a face that seemed to Sandy perhaps incongruously angelic, now that the mischievous energy in her eyes was safely hidden behind gentle, closed eyelids. Dressed in the customary, post-armour tracksuit that had followed her shower, lying comfortably above the covers. Only a small weight on the mattress.
"She was on a thirty-hour rotation including the Berndt Operation," Sandy replied, gazing at the sleeping Lieutenant. "Maybe three hours' sleep in between. Then she had me to attend to all last night. She got to sleep about six hours ago, I reckon she'll wake up in another eight, if she's lucky. It takes it out of you."
"And what about you? Why aren't you sleeping?"
Sandy shrugged faintly. "I hate sleeping under drugs — they're still in my system. I wake up feeling even more tired than when I started. I woke up two hours ago and thought I'd read instead."
"Hmm. What is that?" The President stepped forward and lifted the book in her hand, studying the cover. "Jagdish Singh. Is he any good?"
"Typical Indian drama, lots of marriages, scandals, gratuitous high-fashion and excuses for fancy costumes ... it's fun, it passes the time."
Neiland settled back into the visitor's chair with a sigh. Looked about at the broad windows that stretched around the large room, letting in the sunlight. Outside, it was a lovely day. Endless blue sky beyond the reaching towers. The room was well furnished — a deluxe suite. Security required it. And their guest deserved it.
"So," she said, looking back at Sandy. "How are you feeling?"
"Doctors briefed you, I suppose?" Sandy murmured. Neiland nodded. "Well this is where I get grateful I'm not a straight human — I'd be dead five times over. I just feel numb all over. Can't move, can't eat properly, breathing hurts ..." She shrugged. "... I'll be okay."
"Christ, after stopping an automatic burst point-blank, that's something to be thankful for."
"There was a car door in the way," Sandy replied, quiet and hoarse. "Slowed them a bit, flattened them, made them tumble. Uneven impacts, they didn't penetrate as much." Neiland was staring. Sandy managed a faint smile, remembering the line they'd always told straights who asked. "My stomach's rated at fifty percent tougher than a vest. Most of me is."
Neiland reached and took her hand. Held it in both of her own, feeling between fingers and thumb. Probing. Sandy watched, blue eyes gone sombrely curious. Flexed her fingers slightly, a faint ripple of movement beneath Neiland's probing examination. Neiland looked at her, mild amazement in her eyes.
"That's pretty zeeked," she said. Borrowing from her son's vocabulary, Sandy guessed with faint amusement. "Feels completely human. You've even got the same veins ..." probing with a curious forefinger, tracing a line.
"Cosmetic," Sandy told her.
"Even so." Turned over her palm, as if reading the lines. Felt at the wrist. Frowned as she searched. "No pulse though."
"Lower blood pressure," Sandy murmured. "Much thicker consistency, much more efficient. Keeps up sensory energy mainly. Feedback nerves, temperature, organs. Muscles don't need it, that's mechanical. So I only need about twenty percent the blood that you do." Neiland looked fascinated. "Don't ask me any more. Biology isn't my strong point."
"Biology," Neiland murmured, continuing her examination. "That's what it is really, isn't it? Artificial biology. Nothing mechanical about it."
Sandy made a fist and clenched it, hard. Neiland pulled at it with her fingers. Grabbed with both hands and made an effort, biting her lip. And gave up with a whistled breath. The fist moved not one millimetre.
"It is mechanical," Sandy told her quietly. "So's yours. A hand's just an organic tool. Yours grew from DNA. Mine's synthetic. But it's still just a hand. It just depends on your perspective."
Neiland gazed at her, green eyes locked, hands gentle upon the closed fist.
"Does that bother you?" Sombrely. "Having been made? All this ..." Fingers probed down her arm, ran up to her shoulder and rested there. "... all put together in pieces. Made in hundreds of hightech labs. Toiled over by workers, designers. Engineers." Sandy blinked, softly.
"Does it bother you," she replied, "having once been a small collection of cells in a bloody mass attached to the side of a womb?"
"No." Smiling. "It's marvellous. The wonder of birth and growth. But factories, money and politics ..." Her gaze was penetrating. "It doesn't bother you?"
"How doesn't bother me," Sandy replied. "Why does. Why bothers me a lot."
Neiland thought about it. Leaned forward, elbows on knees, and rested her chin on her hands, Sandy's hand still lightly grasped in her fingers.
"I'm sorry," she sighed. "It's hardly the perfect time to start getting curious."
Sandy gave a faint shake of her head.
"No, it probably is the perfect time." She rolled her head against the pillow. Looked at Vanessa, head on a separate pillow alongside her own. Still sound asleep. Sandy doubted anything short of a live weapons drill would wake her.
"I've been thinking about it quite a bit," she said, gazing at Vanessa's peaceful face. "It's something that needs thinking about."
"Any conclusions?"
"No." Softly. "Just that I need to think about it some more. Soon."
A silence, Sandy watching Vanessa, Neiland watching them both. There was something very touching in Vanessa's slumber, here at her side. Sandy remembered that Vanessa had once spoken of reflexive fears, human reactions to the theoretical presence of threat. And yet here she was, sleeping soundly alongside, unafraid and unworried. Wanting only to be there because her friend Sandy required it, and there was no second bed in the ward, and Sandy, conscious at the time, had invited her to. Vanessa had climbed up alongside, put her head down, and was asleep within seconds. No qualms, no second thoughts, not even after witnessing first-hand what Sandy was capable of. Not even after having fired the stun pellet that dropped her. She had lain down with full knowledge of what she had been sleeping beside, yet had shown not the slightest trepidation, reasoned or otherwise.
It was a nice feeling. For someone to know full well who and what she was and accept her anyway. Consider her a friend. Someone who would protect rather than harm. Which she would, if it came to that, no question. In fact, she thought with tired, reluctant amusement, Vanessa could probably not have found a safer bed to sleep on in all of Tanusha.
"So," she said tiredly, withdrawing her hand from Neiland's curious grip and putting both hands behind her head with a slow, wincing effort, propping her head. "What's it been like at your end?"
Neiland exhaled, shoulders slumping theatrically. Sandy smiled.
"A mess," the President said, leaning wearily back in the chair. "But that was inevitable. There's a major Senate inquiry being launched, full access, public disclosure ... just a big, major flap." Ran a hand absently over her dark-red hair, tugged at the rear knot. "The Federal Committee's going to get here in another ten days ... they're not going to know what hit them. A very sour reception from both sides, I'm feeling. Of course, it remains to be seen just how much of this whole FIA operation they knew about. We'll be demanding a Federal inquiry on their own level with full Callayan representation, but I don't know if anyone's really expecting much. The FIA has too many Federal supporters, too many border worlds are still hawkish on the League ... you know that story better than I could tell it."
Sandy raised a conceding eyebrow. Flexed stiff, painful shoulders, wincing at the stabs of pain up her back and through her stomach. Tight beneath hard-packed bandages.
"You realise," the President added, "that the media now know you exist?"
Sandy sighed. Nodded painfully. "Yeah. I heard. Figured it would be kind of difficult to cover up at this point." Silence, thinking about that for a moment. "Suppose it was inevitable. Pity. I kind of valued my anonymity."
"Ah," Neiland waved a dismissive hand, "it's not so bad, you'll get used to it." Sandy gave her a very flat look. "Well okay, it'll have its moments. But we've got an action plan in the works. They can't reveal your name or face because that's covered by the security legislation, and we've got feelers out in the underground that suggest they're pretty much on your side. The whole underground crowd are generally League-sympathetic anyway — they hate the FIA. They seem to think you're some kind of white witch or something. So you'll have your supporters. Things shouldn't get too far out of control." She paused. "And things are going to get kind of busy in the next few months. People will have plenty of other things to worry about."
Sandy didn't ask. She already knew enough. The anti-Federation protests. The succession moves. The anti-League backlash. Anti-Federation backlash. The biotech radicals and religious conservatives panicking. The next few months would give everyone a lot to think about. Unfortunately, all of those issues seemed to lead directly back to herself, at some point or other.
She exhaled hard, a tight pulling at her midriff, head pillowed on her hands as she stared at the ceiling. The clear, bright sunlight through the windows made a mockery of such murky complexities. She longed for simplicity again. Just a brief respite from having to double-check every option for traps, pitfalls and dead-ends. To go where she pleased and not care for consequences. To forget.
"Another thing I wanted to ask you," Neiland said after a long, silent moment. Her voice was quiet. And Sandy felt her spirits drop through the floor as she sensed what was coming.
"Mahud." One single, sombre word, and the blackness hit her hard in the gut. The sunny day turned to brooding dark. "The body's under the tightest security possible, meaning information control as much as anything. There are options here that I want to clear with you now, while I have the chance."
Neiland's tone was professional and steady, but there was sadness in her eyes. Sandy stared blankly at the ceiling.
"The first thing," she continued in that quiet, sombre tone, "is that when the Senate investigation gets into full swing in a few days they will find out about Mahud. There are powers by which they could gain access to his body. Once that happens, it's out of my hands. There could then be forensic investigations and examinations, maybe even some study research ... it's not allowed, technically, but there are loopholes and arguments for special cases. They've already found plenty with the Parliament strike team. They're not nearly the prize that Mahud would be, though.
"Now I've talked to Guderjaal, and he's prepared to grant you family custody, as effective next-of-kin. Technically it ought to wait until the inquiry finds out, but it's not explicitly spelled out, and that's too bad for them. It also falls under the Federal anti-GI restrictions, which most politicians will find difficult to argue against without getting into hot water with the public, conservative radicals or otherwise. In the meantime, I'm informed that there is a smelter we can hire for government use on short notice that could double as a crematorium. I'm told that's the way it was done in the League, with a recovered body. It can handle a GI's body, and give you his ashes afterward. I know it's not my place to decide for you, but obviously a burial would not work since GI remains mostly do not decay. What do you think?"
Strangely, Sandy did not feel any urge for tears. There was just an empty hollowness, the sense of something just missing. Like she was back on that operating table, under the FIA's knives, losing limbs. A horrible feeling. But she was too drained for grief. Too empty. And maybe, she couldn't help but think, too good at coping with this kind of thing.
No. She hadn't coped well at all last night. Had tried, she recalled dimly, to eat a bullet. She felt no such urge now. It solved nothing, and her waking, sane logic rebelled at the prospect. She knew now, with a grim, fatalistic certainty, that things would go on. She would go on. She had once believed Mahud dead, only to discover otherwise. To have lost him again was agony of a kind that was almost unbearable. But she knew herself too well to believe herself defeated by events. To know herself crushed.
For she could recall, with great, terrible effort, that she had been through worse. It did not seem possible, and for long moments at a time her brain refused to accept that it could be true. But it had been worse, back then, when she'd been told that her entire team was dead. And she had survived and recovered, somewhat, from that devastation. This blow was less, but cumulative. Yet she would survive this one too.
She was too good at the big picture. It had always been her tactical strong point — her ability to see the broader canvas. To focus beyond the moment, to see the future and the past that anchored the present in place. In mission planning it had enabled her to link together cause and effect, to predict an opponent's movements, and the reasons behind them. In life it enabled her to see further than the immediate trauma, see the possibilities that lay beyond. To see that there was always something worth living for ... for someone prepared to change her life.
She turned her head and looked again at Vanessa, sleeping like an angel beside her. Pulled a hand from behind her head, and brushed some loose, curling hair away from Vanessa's face. Her sleeping expression registered no response, oblivious to all but her sleeping dreams. Sandy feared they might be bad dreams, but hoped sincerely otherwise.