An Officer’s Duty (10 page)

Ia shook her head. “No. She comes along in about two hundred years, give or take.”

“Shakk,”
he muttered. “Are we gonna keep suffering from the Fire Girl Prophecies for two hundred more years?”

“The answer to that question is a resounding ‘yes,’” she returned dryly. “Sorry to be the bearer of such annoying news, but there it is…and there is nothing which can be done to stop it, save abandoning the entire planet. Of course, if you do that, the Savior won’t be in the right places at the right times, won’t make the right choices, and won’t save the galaxy from complete annihilation.”

“Well, what the
shakk
can
we
do about it?” Leuron demanded.

Ia lifted her chin. In a moment, they had zoomed back to a moment close to their entry point. “I’m glad you asked. Both of you have a talent for martial arts. Increase your training. Zezu, I need you to go into mining as soon as you graduate. You’re going to need to learn how to operate sandhog drills, and learn them well enough not only to operate any kind of deep ground drill you can get your hands on, but also teach it to others. Leuron, you have an untapped gift for aquaponics. You need to apply for space station lifesupport training as soon as you graduate.”

“Space station lifesupport?” Leuron asked, wrinkling his nose. “You want me to go into space?”

“Actually, I need you to go underground. Everyone will have to go underground…everyone except for the Church and its followers, that is,” Ia amended. “Look, you’ve both seen it. They’re already trying to tighten their grip on this planet. Trying to spread and enforce their fanaticism on everyone. They will succeed in taking over. The problem is, the Savior is bound to head for this world, and if the Church is still in control when she gets here, the wrong things will get done, and all that will be left is death, destruction, and an endless, empty desert.”

“So, what? We have to fight a war with the Church and win?” Leuron asked. He flexed his shoulders a little, tilting his head until his vertebrae cracked. “I can fight ’em!”

She gave him a quelling look. “Save it, Leuron. If the Church loses at the
wrong
point in time, it will be just as bad as if they win in the end.”

“So what is the right point in time?” Zezu asked, exchanging a look with his cousin.

The answer made her smile. A wry smile, but a smile all the same. “About two hundred years in the future, when the Fire Girl arises and sets their biggest cathedral on fire—the Fire Girl Prophecies are exactly that: prophecies of the future. And the Church fears them. It doesn’t fit in with their doctrine, save as the works of the Devil…and we have to go.”

“We have to go?” Zezu asked her, while his cousin peered at the water-crossed, sunlit prairie surrounding them.

She nodded. “Unfortunately, I don’t have a lot of time to spare…and you need time to think about what I’ve shown you. Unlike the Church, who will be trying to brainwash everyone into following their directives blindly in a couple of decades, I and the others who will be opposing them expect you to think for yourselves. To choose of your own free will. But choose quickly. And I hope you follow through on what your conscience tells you to do.

“Remember, do not discuss any of this anywhere near a member of the Church. They will mark you as rebels and heretics, and come after you with a self-righteous vengeance that neither hellfire nor damnation will stop. In fact,” Ia added wryly, “they’d consider it God’s True Work to destroy you. Including anyone associated with you…and that includes Rabbit.”

“How do we know you didn’t brainwash her into following you?” Leuron asked.

Her mouth twisted once more. “Even the most sophisticated brainwashing technique breaks down over time, Leuron. People wise up, or they grow resistant, or the illogical inconsistencies in the neurotic dogmas of their would-be programmers eventually trip them up. The only way I can convince you to put in a true long-term effort is if I have your full, free-willed cooperation. Particularly
you
, Leuron, since I know for a fact you’ve studied martial arts. I’ll need you to train others, to form a bodyguard for key members, such as Rabbit.

“Now, brace yourselves. I’m bringing you back to your bodies. Keep your mouths shut while I deal with the other two.
They need to see for themselves, and to decide for themselves,” she warned them.

They nodded, and Ia reached
out
and
up
with her mind, flipping them back into their bodies.

Both young men drew in deep breaths, opening their eyes. Once more, they were surrounded by the plebian décor of the Italian-themed restaurant. Removing her fingertips from their foreheads, Ia stepped back. A glance at the chrono on her wrist unit showed that only half a minute had passed. She nodded solemnly to the two cousins, then turned to the remaining two, James and Aru.

James eyed her warily. “What was
that
all about?”

“I’m glad you’re so willing to volunteer and find out, James.” Stepping up to him, Ia lifted her hand to his forehead.

So tedious, having to do this over and over…I really, really have to figure out how to make those crystalline wreaths work. Maybe if I take one into the timestreams with me, the next time I do this? It did seem to work—at least to shape it—when I took myself onto the timestreams. But to…program it, for lack of a better term…I’ll have to try it after today. As soon as I handle Aru, I’ll need to eat. Traversing Time doesn’t happen for free, after all. Not even for me.

Gently, she touched James’s brow with the pads of her fingers, connecting her meager telepathy and her major precognition with his unsuspecting mind. Between one breath and the next, reality dissolved around her and James Chong-Wuu. The world turned amber gold and grassy in undulating, stream-crossed plains. Patiently, Ia hauled her companion out of the waters of his own life, before the images of his potential-possible futures could overwhelm and drown the poor boy.

Once more, she led another hopeful, potential helper on a heavily edited exploration of the horrors lurking in the future. “Come and see what I see, James, and see what Rabbit knows we must do.”

JULY 24, 2492 T.S.

The average Human body can recover about forty milliliters of blood a day…

Ia set the measuring shot glass on the bathroom counter, along with a small box and an eyedropper. The room was kept very clean; life on a triple-gravitied planet was hard enough without risking a careless infection by some local or imported disease. Counters, toilet, sink, and knobs were wiped down every day, the floor and showering tub scrubbed every week on the one day the restaurant downstairs was closed. Her parents had never been afraid of hard work, particularly when it came to caring for family.

Anyone who donates blood on a regular basis, particularly in small, consistent amounts, needs to increase the iron and other nutrients in their diet…

Today’s lunch had been a generous serving of medium-rare roasted slices of q’al, a salad of chartreuse butter-mung leaves, and a colorful casserole of topadoes
au gratin
, with the bright blue tubers sliced into medallions and layered with orange-hued, tangy-sharp cheeses. So she had eaten her protein for the day, plenty of other vitamins and nutrients in the topadoes, plus the local equivalent of leafy greens to process all that protein and iron with folic acid.

The extraction of blood is still a somewhat primitive process medically, particularly in doses larger than a fraction of a milliliter…

Scrubbing her hands at the sink, she carefully wiped them on a fresh towel, then rubbed antiseptic sanitizer on her skin from the pump dispenser for added safety. The stuff smelled like crisp apples, an exotic, imported treat on Sanctuary, where real apples and other fruit often ended up falling off the tree before it could ripen. Local scientists were still working on breeding varieties with stronger, sturdier stems, but even with advanced horticultural techniques, it still took years to mature, breed, and crossbreed enough trees before anyone could come up with a healthy, viable variation.

Not to mention the original extraction equipment often had to be discarded after each use, wasting resources and clogging disposal facilities…

The contents of the small box she had set beside the shot glass hadn’t been easy to get. Not without someone tracing the transaction back to her. A little luck and a bit of digging through the timestreams on Ia’s part had allowed a friend of
Rabbit’s to acquire it for her. Expensive in terms of time, but worth it.

And of course with the advent of interorbital travel, it became prohibitively expensive to send fully trained medical personnel along with each and every spaceship…which is why the Triple-S, or Subdermal Strap-on Sampler, is the best friend of doctors, nurses, paramedics, and ship medics. For any sample larger than a few drops but smaller than a quarter of a liter, this tool, made from completely recyclable, easily cleaned and sterilized, environmentally friendly, medical-grade plexi, will be your new best friend…

Opening the box, Ia followed the instructions both written on the box and recited in the back of her mind. The words of the lecture came from herself, albeit from a far-removed possible life wherein she had taken up a career in medicine, instead of gone into the military. A life wherein she lectured younger nursing students on how to draw blood for various tests. A large number could be done with the blood still safely inside the body, but there were still certain kinds of medical procedures where it had to be placed in a vial or a beaker before it could be experimented upon.

Or in her case, in a shot glass.

Most importantly, so long as the body involved has a functional cardiovascular system, it requires no power setting to withdraw the blood once you have set the volume marker to indicate how much you wish to extract…and since it works on the vacuum principle, it can work in free fall as well as our local Sanctuarian gravity…

Carefully centering the crosshairs over one of the blue veins on the back of her left hand, Ia strapped it in place, set the volume marker, and depressed the accordion-folded container on the back slowly, pressing the air out of the extraction chamber. Once it was depressed to the right depth for forty milliliters, she braced herself.

Ia hesitated, thumb on the puncturing lever.

Oh, this is ridiculous!
Scowling, she glared at her reflection in the mirror. The same face as always scowled back. Almond-shaped amber eyes, brown eyebrows and lashes, crone-white hair that needed a good combing, and probably could stand to be a little longer in front, as Rabbit had suggested.
Did you or
did you not unflinchingly take a damned kitchen knife through your palm last year?
Through
your palm? Stop being such a wimp, Iantha. It couldn’t possibly hurt any more than an overcharged laser through the shoulder, you know.

Yeah,
the fear flinching behind her glaring eyes replied,
but those were one-time pains. This is something you’ll have to do again and again and again and again, day after day after day after day…

Closing her eyes, Ia gritted her teeth and pictured the barren, lifeless desert of the future.
Failure is not an option. It never was, and it never will be.
Opening them again, she looked down at her hand and shoved the little lever. Once past the tension point, it snapped into place. Pain pinched the soft skin on the back of her hand, and the compressed extraction chamber started expanding again. The translucent white plexi turned darker, redder as she watched.

When it filled to the right depth, the lever snapped back into position. Unstrapping the peculiar little machine, Ia grimaced at the blood trickling from the back of her hand. A few drops made it to the countertop. Again, she closed her eyes, this time to flex her mind and seal the injury. It worked faster than it had for Fyfer and Thorne, but that was only natural; her biokinetic abilities worked best on her own flesh, drawing far greater power from the direct application of her own peculiar energies.

A slow, deliberate count to one hundred, and she opened her eyes, reaching for the sink faucet. Scrubbing and drying her skin, she found the wound sealed and mostly healed, just a pink dot not much bigger than the head of a pin.
Painful and unpleasant…but bearable. Though I don’t know how people like diabetics and such went through this day after day, back at the beginnings of modern medicine…

Right. The next step.
Picking up the Triple-S, she extracted the container from the back of the device—and yelped as the door swung partway open. It quickly shut again, followed by the sound of her mother’s voice.

“Ia? Is that you? I’m sorry, kitten,” Aurelia called through the panel. “I didn’t hit you, did I?”

“Uh, no…no,” Ia called back, quickly gathering her supplies. She could stuff the eyedropper and the shot glass into
her shirt pocket, but the Triple-S and the extraction vessel were a little more awkward. She managed to get the mechanism back into the box, but her mother opened the door again, this time by a handspan.

“What are you doing,
gataki mou
? Wait—is that
blood
?” She pushed the door open further, poking her head through. “Ia, are you
cutting
yourself?”

It wasn’t the container that had caught her mother’s eyes, but the drops on the counter, which she hadn’t cleaned up yet. Worse, her precognitive instincts twinged, warning her of the coming, headache-sized conversation.

“Mother,
no
. No, I am
not
‘cutting’ myself. I am
not
emotionally depressed, I am
not
thinking suicidal thoughts, I do
not
need to go into psychiatric therapy
again
,” she stressed, rolling her eyes at her mother’s reflection.

Aurelia rolled her own eyes. “Then
what
are you doing bleeding all over our bathroom counter, young lady?”

“I’m performing an
experiment
. It’s nothing you need worry about.” Grabbing a tissue from the dispenser, Ia mopped up the stains. She scrubbed the counter with a second one and a little water, then tossed them into the recycler. Snatching up the squeeze-box of blood, Ia gave Aurelia a pointed look of her own. “Shouldn’t
you
be working down in the restaurant right now?”