Asimov's Science Fiction: March 2014 (2 page)

"It's grown for you, from your cells. It grafts on and bonds right to you."

"But the addiction, right, that's part of what it does too. Cleanses me, takes it away. Kind of like a self-regulating methadone pump in my body."

Den hesitated. Was that why she was doing it? Would it put her off to find out that it would only give her a leg, but he couldn't promise a cure? "There's some other research going on," he said. "Elsewhere. Treated organs. A leg's just muscle and bone, really. Sorry, but it's not going to do that."

"Isn't that the whole point?"

"It doesn't work like that," he said.

Jenni nodded. "Just up here. Eleven sixty-two."

Den watched the numbers on the gates and pulled up behind a rusted out Camry jammed in at the curb.

"This is sweet of you," she said. "It's good to spend time with you again."

"Likewise." How long could she keep hooking anyway? How long would she survive doing what she did at all?

Jenni leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. "Little brother." She laughed. "Little brother come to straighten me out." She leaned back and popped the door open. "Be just a few minutes."

Den felt a wash of heat as the door opened. He watched her cross the sidewalk and go through the steel gate on the Hurricane wire fence. The latch clicked shut after her and from somewhere in the yard a dog barked.

Den leaned back into the Toyota's headrest. It was weird seeing her again. He'd been a kid, really, the last time. Their father had decided to drive back down to Ridgecrest to patch things, maybe. At least to make contact.

Jenni had been almost clean in those days. At least that's what he thought. But she had been an occasional working girl. She had nicer digs, and she shared with another woman. Jenni had taken a week off her job at the hospital to show them around. Not that there was anything much to see in the little desert town. The Trona pinnacles, a tiny museum. They'd driven in through Death Valley, which seemed to Den the most interesting part. Below sea level. He'd stood on the roadway, imagining two hundred feet of water above his head.

It had started off fine, but it ended with his father and Jenni arguing. He didn't like the way she was living, wanted her to come up to Idaho with them. She didn't like being told what to do. Didn't think it was any business of his. Hadn't he abandoned her anyway?

"It wasn't like that," he'd said.

"Wasn't like what?"

But his father hadn't replied. Hadn't been able to. Den wished he'd been able to think of something to say. He'd been fourteen, and still stunned to discover that his sister was a prostitute. It had seemed so exotic, so dangerous. The girls he knew in school were developing, and most of them had enjoyed taunting the boys, but none of that was anything like as
grown up
as what his sister was doing. Prostitutes, to him, were in the movies. They had pimps who beat them up, and they took drugs and hung out on street corners in ridiculous sparkly taffeta and sequined outfits that just stretched to fit as if they were actually meant to be worn as a sock. Those people weren't his sister. Except, as it turned out, they were. She was. And, in the intervening years, she'd just gotten in deeper.

A door slammed and Den looked back up at the house. Jenni glided down the front walk. She reached slowly for the gate, sliding it aside and continuing through. He reached over and pushed the door open for her.

Taking the window edge, she stood for a moment, breathing, then slipped into the passenger seat. "Well," she said.

"Cat taken care of?"

She looked at him with a goofy smile, slumping down a little in the seat. "All taken care of."

"Oh, Jenni," he said. He'd seen her eyes. Dilated. He was surprised she was upright and able to converse.

"I feel like a coffee," she said. "We could stop at Starbuckeroo's."

"Did you—"

"Drop it." She stared through the windshield.

"Yeah." He felt sad, almost choked up a little. He wished that the graft would be able to do something to make her well. "Do you want to close your door?"

"Mm-hm." She didn't move.

Den reached, then pulled back. He got out and walked around to close her door.

She glanced at him, still grinning a little.

He drove to Starbuck's, nestled in a corner of the Wal-Mart lot with Taco Del Mar and a new Century 21 office.

"Mocha," she said. "Litewite, cinnamon, no sugar."

He doubted it would wake her up at all, but he was back in a couple of minutes with a Venti mocha and an espresso for himself. "You're a hon," she told him as he set the styrene cups into the holders in the dash. He headed out of town. She got it together enough to pick up the coffee occasionally and sip from it. She didn't speak until they'd gone through Mojave.

"Guess you still see Dad plenty?"

"Couple of times a month."

"Good. I should get up there and see him. Maybe after we get this leg fitted we can turn around and go up and visit."

"Sure."

"Oh." She looked at him. The first time in miles. "Better. Ditch the rental and you can take me up in the Camaro."

"My car's in Caspar."

"Too bad." She drifted off into unconsciousness.

Den called Melissa. She sounded chirpy, but her tone changed as soon as he asked about the schedule

"Seriously?"

"As a favor," he said.

"I know what you're doing," she told him. "You want me to bump someone from the ballot. Someone who's been waiting for months, anticipating the opportunity."

"Exactly."

Melissa didn't reply.

"Why don't you just call me when you've figured it out?"

"You might as well turn around and go back home."

"This is my sister. She's been through a lot."

"I suppose you're going to try to tell me that she's a vet? That she lost that leg to a landmine in Somalia or Pakistan?"

"Look up her record. It will be on the military lists. You've got access to all of those."

"Sheesh, you think I'm not doing that already? Of course I'm... oh."

"Yeah." Den sighed. At least something had worked. Melissa had the car wreck details.

"Yeah." Melissa expelled a breath. "Okay. I don't think I can do much. Do you know how long this has been scheduled?"

"Yes."

"Call me back in an hour. I'll let you know."

Through Palmdale and Sylmar, Jenni slept on. She woke when the car came to a stop in dead freeway traffic through Pasadena.

"Parking lot," she murmured.

"Pasadena." Six lanes of it. "They're building another overpass."

"Well, that'll relieve things for sure." She smiled. "And you live here?"

"Commute. Lot of time in planes."

"Out of Wyoming?"

"Lifestyle," he said.

"I'm sure. A shining knight."

"What am I doing?" he said. "I mean, aside from trying to give you a leg?" "Just trying to rescue me. It's kind of nice, but also a little creepy. It makes me think you've been spending years trying to work out just how. Years and years."

"It's my field."

"Yeah, but how long ago did you get into it? You didn't tell me that yet."

He didn't have an answer.

"See," she said.

"I could let you out here," he said.

"You're such a kid."

It was an hour before she spoke again. Traffic picked up and they were coming into San Bernardino, near the complex. A standard pair of five story buildings in a commercial park, the labs were discreet and almost anonymous. A small sign over the door—ChaistonLabs—was all that distinguished it from any of the other buildings: housing, records management, and accounting firms.

Melissa met them at the door. "Don't look so surprised," she told him. "I tracked you."

"You're invading my privacy."

"You're jeopardizing my livelihood."

"Hi, I'm Jenni." His sister held out her hand to shake.

Melissa took it. She glanced down at Jenni's leg. "Car wreck?"

"Yeah," Jenni said with a grin. "Let's go with that."

Melissa glanced over her shoulder. "We'll go in the service entrance."

"Wow," Jenni said. "You're going to lose your job, right?"

"No. I'll deny everything. I've already wiped all my phone records of contact with him. To do with this, anyway."

"They can still track it," Den said. He followed along behind the two women. Jenni was still a little shaky on her feet. He knew they were going to do blood work on her before they started with the attachment. He hoped that wasn't going to be too much of a problem. Technically, he knew opiates in her system wouldn't interfere with the graft, but it would bring flags up.

"If they want to track it, they can," Melissa said. "But of course they won't need to." Now she looked around at him. "Because if anything goes wrong, you'll take full responsibility."

"Will I?"

"He will," Jenni said. "He's good like that."

"Yes he is," Melissa agreed.

They came to a loading dock and Melissa went up a set of narrow concrete steps. She wanded her bracelet at the service door and it opened with a clank. "Welcome to ChaistonLabs," she said and ushered them in.

Den followed Jenni into a warehouse space. There were tidy racks and a little fork lift parked in a corner. Melissa gave Jenni a laminated visitor card riveted to light chains to hang around her neck. "In case anyone stops us." She pointed to a long, bright corridor on the far side.

"That way."

Jenni looked at her card, then turned for the corridor.

Melissa grabbed Den's arm as Jenni moved on ahead.

"Mel?"

"Is she high? Seriously?"

"A few hours ago. She'll be fine."

"Was she high when she crashed the car and lost her leg?"

"You didn't see her file?"

"Den. You could have put anything on that. And you probably did. I didn't even read it. I knew she was related to you. That was enough."

Den nodded. He felt like he was on prickly ground. Melissa could just pull the plug any time. "I did fabricate the cause."

"Figures. It's going to light up every medical board from here to Chicago if she's got opiates in her system when we start sampling."

Den didn't say anything. He should have stopped Jenni when she'd gone in to arrange the feeding of the cat. Or gone with her. Simple.

"You hearing me?"

Den nodded. "I figure there's some way around it."

"I'm going to have to talk to Ron."

"This is my sister."

"Who I'm guessing you didn't have anything much to do with until a few weeks back."

"She came up on the databases. Amputee."

"So you decided to play little brother rescuer." It wasn't a question.

"She's family," he said. "If we can't do it now, then some other time." He glanced behind. The door from the corridor to the loading dock had closed. "You brought us in here. You could have asked all these questions on the phone."

"I hadn't seen her wavering yet. Even then it took me a minute or two. She's a hard-core user. High, but upright, almost lucid."

"We had coffee."

Melissa snorted. "Yeah, that'll wake her right up."

"You two should stop talking about me like that," Jenni said without turning around. "I'm an addict, but I'm not deaf."

"The procedure won't cure you," Melissa said. "A new leg, that's all. I don't know what you might have read. We're not organs, just limbs and digits. Organs are a whole other setup."

"The aliens, right?"

"That's right."

"She's not expecting to be cured," Den said. "She's just humoring her little brother.

The rescuer."

Jenni laughed.

"Make a left up here," Melissa said.

In a few moments they were in a small clean-room. Melissa locked the door. Jenni had already clambered up onto the locked gurney.

"I need to strip?" she said.

"Just the leg," Melissa told her. She whipped up a screen and waved her own badge at it. The screen unlocked and she quickly began compiling data. "Have you got your medical info with you?"

"My what?" Jenni said. She grinned at Den.

Den gave Melissa Jenni's memory flake. Everything he'd been able to glean and scam from various databases.

Jenni unstrapped her leg as she stared at him. "You get that I'm only doing this for you, right?"

Den nodded. He didn't trust her anyway.

"Because I'm just an experiment to you, really. You think you're doing right by your family, doing something to help me out. But really it's all veneer."

"Huh?" Melissa said.

"Oh, you can listen, too, honey. You probably know what he's like. Yeah, I see you nodded. Did you two date? Are you still dating? 'Cos that would surprise me."

Melissa pulled back from the screen. "We dated." She looked at Den. "For the briefest moment I thought we might have another run at it."

"You should, girl. My brother, he's an ace. A catch and keeper."

"Jenni," Den said.

"Where have you been? That's what I want to know."

"Tell you what," Melissa said. "I can finish this up in the theatre. I'll send in the nurse to get her prepped."

"Melissa," Den said. "It's all right."

"Don't. I'm trying to help you out here. I don't need to listen to all this family drama." She slipped out the door.

"Well," Jenni said. "Sorry for screwing things up with your girlfriend."

Den stared at her.

"Oh, what a face."

"I don't know what you think," he said. "But she's not my girlfriend." Somewhere in the back of his mind he'd known that he would regret doing this. Perhaps on some level she was right; perhaps he was doing it to try to assuage some kind of guilt from the past. As the thought passed through his head, he realized that she hadn't even said that. It had been implied, but not explicit. Perhaps it hadn't even been implied. She might have scratched into something he'd been trying to avoid.

"Why don't we get this leg pinned onto me, then we can talk on the way home," she said.

"Not as simple as that."

"What? The leg, or talking?"

He was about to be dismissive, but managed to say, "Both."

"Yup."

A nurse came in with a trolley of equipment. "Hi," he said. "Andy." He got busy with setting up things. He handed Jenni a waiver brick, took her temperature, and drew blood.