Blood and Fire (35 page)

“Let me kill him for you—”

“Don't kill anyone for me, Danny. That's not the legacy I want.” And then he added, “And if you do that ... I'm not sure I can come back again—”

Easton sagged. “Damn you! Damn you!” Abruptly he swung his arm sideways and held the stinger pistol out to his side, where Korie took it gratefully from his hand.
“Attaboy, Danny,”
someone whispered. Armstrong? Berryman?

Korie handed the weapon sideways—to Parsons—and grabbed Easton before he could collapse unconscious to the floor. “Call Williger! My God, he's burning up—”

And at the same time, someone else was screaming too. It was Jarell: “What the hell are you doing?!!”

Blintze had grabbed the glittering little vial out of Jarell's hand, and now, as everyone watched, he popped it into a pressure-spray injector. Before anyone could stop him, he applied it directly to his forearm—the telltale hiss told the entire story.

“You stupid asshole! What have you done?!”

Blintze ignored him. “Captain Parsons, I believe I've just solved the plasmacyte problem. Will you please have me transferred over to the
Norway
?”

Jarell screamed. “You disloyal traitor!”

“No, Yonah. It's over. Enough is enough. No more killing. No more.”
He looked to Parsons hurriedly. “We have a limited amount of time, Captain. Only a few minutes before these things turn into bloodworms.”

Williger entered the Ops Deck from the forward hatch. She came around the side of the main display, followed by two Quillas—one carrying an emergency kit, the other carrying a stretcher. They headed straight for the Command Deck.

Parsons was already calling out orders. “Security—take Commander Jarell to the brig. And Easton and Blintze to Med Bay.”

Bach and Shibano had already seized Jarell. Now, as they escorted—almost dragged—him off the Bridge, Blintze turned back to Parsons. “No, Captain. The transfer tube.”

“We can save you!” And then she added, “I think.” She looked to Williger. “He's got plasmacytes in his bloodstream.”

“Get him to the Med Bay. Fast!”

“No. Get me to the transfer tube. I don't want to be saved, Captain. I don't want to grow old listening to my conscience. Listen, I made a mistake. I trusted Jarell. And the
Norway
died. All of my friends and colleagues died.” Blintze's whole demeanor had changed in the last few moments—he no longer looked like a man with a death sentence. His eyes were alive with enthusiasm. “I'll tell you what we discovered. The plasmacytes are something beautiful. Not a war weapon at all—but a kind of life that's marvelous to see. The Regulans perverted it. We can cure it. We can heal it.” He spread his hands wide in an act of supplication. “Captain Parsons, this is where the sickness stops. All the hate. All the dying.”

“This is a death sentence, Dr. Blintze.”

“No, it isn't. It's a
life
sentence. Do you want to know why you couldn't find the cure on the
Norway
? Because it isn't there. I had it all the time.”

“Then why didn't you
use
it?”

“Because ...” Blintze spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness. “Because ... I had to hide it from LENNIE. A LENNIE isn't just paranoid, it's a death-engine. It's a killing machine. It hates life. The only way to work with a LENNIE is to show it that you're inventing new ways to kill. Make yourself a partner in death. Serve LENNIE or die. If LENNIE had realized that I had saved the cure, he would have destroyed the
Norway
, and it would have been lost forever—all the research, everything. I didn't want that to happen.”

“It would have been better all around if it had,” said Parsons, starting to feel annoyed.

Blintze ignored her. He continued quickly, “I had to synthesize it in
isolation—pretending to be doing something else the whole time; but LENNIE figured out what I was up to and let the plasmacytes loose. But he only thought I'd completed the theoretical part. He didn't realize I'd only been writing down my notes on things to test
after
I'd already performed the experiments. That was the only way I could leave a trail. It almost worked. When you arrived, I realized I had to find a way to get it off the ship and out of LENNIE's reach. I almost told you when I came aboard—but then your HARLIE unit swore at me and I realized I couldn't trust it either. Somehow LENNIE had infected it. So I injected myself with the cure because ... because I couldn't think of any better place to hide it. And now that you know, you need to get me off this ship and onto the
Norway
, where I can try to make a difference. And I'll need a stinger pistol with a self-destruct timer on it, please.”

“It's suicide,” said Parsons.

“I've earned the right.”

“Nobody's earned the right to decide when a life should end.”

“You can believe that if you want. I believe otherwise. Captain, we're wasting time.”

“I think you're really afraid of what a Board of Inquiry will do to you,” she replied.

“Maybe so. But we're still wasting time.”

“Suicide is the coward's way out, Blintze. It's nothing more than a way to say ‘fuck you' to the universe.”

“Fine,” said Blintze. “Believe that too. But we're still wasting time.”

Parsons looked away. She looked to Williger—the doctor was already bent over Easton, applying several small devices to his chest and arms. She glanced up long enough to say, “It's triage. Let him go.”

Parsons looked to Korie. Korie closed his eyes and nodded his agreement.

“All right, Dr. Blintze. Have it your way.” She offered him the stinger she still held. “Mr. Korie, please escort Dr. Blintze to the transfer tube. Have Chief Leen activate the repulsor fields immediately. Send a robot over first—have it destroy the
Norway
's power supply—I don't want LENNIE out of commission, I want him dead.”

“Thank you, Captain—”

“Don't thank me. I'm not doing it for you.” Blintze nodded an acknowledgment and started to step past her. She stopped him with a look and added, “I'm a Catholic. I believe that suicides go to Hell. I'm supposed to try to stop you. But I can't. My only real regret here is that you're not taking Yonah Jarell with you.”

“If you want—” Blintze started to offer.

“Just get the hell off my ship. As fast as you can.” She turned away deliberately.

When she was sure that Korie had escorted Blintze safely off the Bridge, she turned to Williger; the two Quillas were just lifting Easton's unconscious body onto the stretcher. “Will he be all right?”

“He's suffering a triple-whammy of aftereffects, but yes—I think so.”

“Good. Dr. Williger, I don't want to court-martial this man. Find me a reason not to. Now, who's on Chaplain duty? I've just been an accessory to a mortal sin and I need to go to confession.”

“Wait till tonight, when I'm on duty,” growled Williger, following the stretcher aft. “I'll make sure that your penance will be the worst in your life.”

“Bring an extra glass. I think Korie will be joining us—”

On the Bridge of the
Norway
, Makkle Blintze stood alone. He had a camera and a scanner. He set the remote down in the center of the Ops Deck and looked around. The light from the camera filled the Bridge, but it cast dark shadows that left gloomy corners behind everything.

Around him swirled a quiet hurricane of pink and gold flickers. Some of them drifted toward him—and into him. Others danced in the air. There were so many, he could almost hear them.

“Can you see me?” he asked. “Can you hear me?”

“We have monitoring,” Korie's voice came back to him.

“Good,” said Blintze. He opened the seals on his starsuit. “I'm taking off my headset now. And as you can see, the forward display is off. The entire Bridge is dead, so I can't see you or hear you anymore. I'll keep reporting for as long as I can. I don't think this is going to take very long. I'm the only warm body left on the ship and every wavicle aboard is trying to get to me. It's almost as if they can tell I have what they want. The worms are creeping this way too. But I don't think they'll get here in time. As soon as I'm sure the bloodworms inside my body have been infected with the recombinant genes, I'm going to activate the self-destruct on the stinger. That will guarantee the creation of recombinant wavicles. I've got a low-level scanner here. I can't scan myself, but I can scan for residual radiation, and we'll be looking for telltale spikes in the ultra-high and ultra-low bands. Stand by.”

Blintze stepped up onto the Command Deck and balanced the scanner on the executive officer's chair. Then he lowered himself respectfully into the captain's chair. “Nice. I like it. It's a throne. A feeling of power, almost.” He held out his arms and waved them, making swirls of wavicles in the air. “It doesn't hurt. It tickles a little, but I expected that. It's kind of ... sensual. Oh, hell, why am I being modest now? It's a very sexual feeling, like that tingle you get just before orgasm. Only it just keeps going and going without ever going anywhere.

“When I was a child, I used to wonder how I would die—it terrified me. Not the dying, but the loss of control it represented. I admit it, I've always been fascinated by the idea of suicide—of knowing how and when I would die. And why. At least this is a noble death. Maybe as
noble as I can achieve.” He fell silent for a moment, lost in thought, then after a long pause, began speaking again. “Sorry about that. The truth is, I don't have any right to claim nobility. I participated in something dreadful—a weapon of mass destruction. Possibly the greatest sin a human being can commit. And all the self-justifications and rationalizations and excuses and reasons and explanations ... aren't worth a bucket of warm shit. The truth is, I let myself be a very ordinary person, just going along, being led, doing what I was told—not willing to take a stand. Not willing to make waves—but certainly willing to make wavicles ... Until now, when it's almost too late. And anything worthwhile I might say or do now is going to be outvoted by a lifetime of cowardice. I guess this is a deathbed conversion. And therefore worthless. It undoes nothing.

“What I'm doing now... it's not redemption at all. You were right, Captain Parsons. I'm taking the coward's way out. I suppose I should apologize, but the scientist in me wants to believe that the cure will work ... and this at least lets us complete the experiment. And maybe someday, someone will say that this much at least was a contribution to science. Or humanity. Or knowledge. Or something. I don't know. Shit. I don't know what to say. I wasted my life and I'm sorry. And I hope someday, somehow, someone will forgive me. Say a prayer for me, maybe. Catholics believe in redemption, Captain, don't they? I don't. I never did. But here I am at the last minute, begging ... just in case.”

He got up and started walking around the Bridge again. “There's something going on with the wavicles. Something beautiful. I don't know if you can see it, but I'm seeing shades of colors here I've never seen before. Very delicate. Like sparkles off a diffraction grating, only brighter. If I close my eyes, I can still see them, brighter than ever. I don't think we perceive the wavicles through light. I think they directly stimulate the retinal cells as they pass through us. Just a guess. Someone else will have to figure that part out.”

He climbed back up onto the Command Deck and peered at the scanner. “I'm starting to get telltales. That's good. It means I can set the stinger to self-destruct anytime. I'm setting it now. I'm not in any pain. Not really. It's like when your leg falls asleep, only it's my whole body that tingles.

“Can you see this?” he asked, not expecting an answer. He waved his arms around, leaving swirls of sparkles flickering in the air. “They're clustering around me, aren't they?”

The pinpoint sparkles were no longer swirling about the man. Now
they were drifting toward him, accelerating as they approached, arrowing inward, sleeting through him like arrows of light. He lifted his arms to the ceiling, standing in the center of his own aurora borealis. He radiated like a saint. The air around him crackled and glowed. Blintze stopped talking. He turned slowly, savoring his moment of transformation.

He was enveloped in light now, almost disappearing into the center of a sphere of brightness—both gauzy and crystalline. The sparkles turned and twisted around him, dancing in the air like fairy-dust motes. Blintze was barely visible within the pinpoint fireworks, his face rapturous.