IGMS Issue 44 (8 page)

"We'll talk later. The nurse will give her something for the pain," Dr. Venus said. And then, as he was turning to leave, he stepped close to Jake's ear and whispered, "I couldn't take them out. The Major had two men in the operating room."

Three months later, the ship docked with the Bruma space station that orbited Blue Two. Jake, Andrea, and Malia moved to a fleshy two-room home in the organic part of the station while the other colonists started a slow exodus down to Blue Two in space shuttles.

The Durow family had little time for envy, though. Four days after their arrival, little Stuart was born.

Still, after the number of colonists had thinned out, they fought about going downside. The point was moot, since the Major wouldn't let them leave the station, but that didn't stop them arguing.

Andrea refused to believe Major Blutnikov's story. She kept saying that none of the brain scans had turned up anything, and she said it so often even Jake felt his own fear wear off.

Nevertheless, he continued arguing how Malia would need the best clinic for the next C-section, and The Blue Two authorities didn't want Bruma babies on the surface. But as Andrea pointed out every time, the real reason was the lack of brain scanning facilities on Blue Two. She was right too, and it made him feel like a coward.

Jake could never quite explain to anyone what it was like at night, waking up at two to give Stu his bottle, pacing the floor with the infant in his arms until he slept, and gently, gently putting him back in the cradle with a feeling of dread that if the child woke, he would collapse in exhausted tears. Slip into bed, pull the covers up over his nose, wondering how tired he would be the next day; listening to Malia's breathing, drifting off and waking up forty minutes later because Malia was crying and hungry. Going to the kitchen alcove, heating a brick of blue pudding, only to have her ask for hot milk and biscuits. Back to the kitchen, stirring Fantomalt into the milk, finding the whole-fat biscuits, buttering one up for her, and sitting cross-legged on the floor while she ate three bites and promptly fell asleep.

Some nights he'd fall asleep on the floor. On other nights he took a walk on the space station. Vast and populated by humans and Bruma in the daytime, the long tunnels and spacious viewing decks were the embodiment of solitude in the night. Jake could spend hours staring out the windows into the eternal darkness of space and never meet a soul.

Perhaps other insomniacs used the windows to stare at Blue Two far below, but the sight of the planet always filled Jake with jealousy and frustrated hopes. Only space seemed to understand the darkness in him.

Somehow the remaining three months and seven days passed. The second operation was a success, for Malia and the four newborn third variety Bruma males. Doctor Venus declared Malia clean, and apart from a two-month quarantine to get her immune system up to speed, the Durow family was medically approved for going downside. Normality beckoned, and Jake craved it.

Major Blutnikov was the only obstruction on their way to Blue Two. He didn't object to them leaving; he simply failed to sign the release form that allowed Malia to go downside. After a bit of heckling, Jake got the station manager to arrange for a shuttle to the surface, but the manager made Jake understand that the Major could veto their departure.

On their penultimate evening on the space station, Stu slept in the cradle they'd coaxed out of the station's floor. Andrea was boxing the supplies they wouldn't use downside, and Jake was wrangling the cargo manifest.

They had an allowance of seventy-five kilograms, and so far he'd packed ninety-four.

Malia was skipping around the room, and Jake grinned as she tried to do cartwheels. She'd learned that in the low-grav section of the Bruma station, but in the makeshift living quarters, the pseudo-gravity was too strong for her arms. That didn't stop her. Nothing stopped her. And nothing ever would again if he had anything to say about it.

"Whoops!" she shouted, and then she started laughing in earnest. "They're tickling me, Dad."

Her words turned Jake's stomach to ice all over again. "Where, honey? Is it your tummy?"

"No, silly," she laughed. "Not real tickling. It's like they're in my head."

"Where in your head?" he demanded. The coldness was spreading through his body, slowing his movements. He dropped the manifest and hurried over to Malia, who took a cue from his mood and stopped laughing.

"Dad, they're just playing a game. They're having fun up in the nest room, hiding from the overseers."

The word "overseers" tricked something in his mind that soothed his immediate terror. He understood about parasites in stomachs, and this wasn't it. It probably had nothing to do with Brumas, just some weird side effect of the infestation or the drugs. Or even an invented story. But the icy feeling didn't pass, so after a hushed debate with Andrea he punched the com unit.

Doctor Venus didn't take the call, though. A nurse told Jake to relax, that there was nothing they could do until morning, and that maybe Malia had had a dizzy spell.

"Even if it's Bruma-related, you'll just have to wait," the nurse said sympathetically. "You might as well do that at home." Her words were simultaneously the truth, a wild understatement, and a curse.

Jake returned to his manifest and prepared for a long night of senseless worrying. Every other moment he glanced at Malia, but she didn't mention tickling again.

At ten in the evening, as Jake was contemplating a sleeping pill, a message from Dr. Venus ticked in on the wall com.

Jake, I got your call that your departure has been moved forward for tomorrow. I'll drop by the launch bay to see you off and discuss that question you mentioned.

Jake's first reaction was to think that Dr. Venus hadn't heard about Malia. Then he noted that the departure date was wrong. They weren't leaving until the day after tomorrow, and he almost messaged Doctor Venus back to tell him so. Almost. But before he could do anything, a revised departure schedule ticked in, asking them to report to the shuttle bay the next morning.

It dawned on him that Dr. Venus might very well be sending them a message to get off the station.

The launch bay dwarfed them all, a huge hall of dull metal and carbon stretching out into space from the meaty part of the Bruma station. It was the first time Jake had seen it since seeing the other colonists off, and he was still impressed by the great empty space allocated just for cargo handling. Four technicians were inspecting one freight shuttle's friction shield, and a threesome of loaders fussed over balance distribution in another. They'd add the Durow family's 74.9 kilogram allowance soon.

Stu had had a laxative so he'd arrive with a mostly empty diaper. Malia was strutting about in her flight suit as if she owned the world. She would, when they got downside.
If
. She'd mentioned tickling twice in the last hour, and Jake was so afraid that the Bruma were back that his shuttle-suit's biometrics kept ordering him to take deep breaths.

While they were going over the suit's security routines, Doctor Venus joined them. A young ethnic Chinese man wearing the same outfit as the dock workers shuffled after him with a hesitant, even unfriendly look that made Jake wonder if he'd packed too much. Other than that, the doctor had his full attention.

"Malia says it tickles," Jake said.

"In her head," Andrea said. She looked terrified, but she said what Jake had been thinking the whole time. "We need to discuss a brain scan."

"I'm reasonably certain there's nothing wrong with Malia," Doctor Venus said.

"How . . . You can't . . .," was all Jake could say.

As always, Andrea managed a more coherent string of words. "I've picked up enough medical knowledge to know you'd never make a diagnosis without an examination. Why would you skip the scan?"

"Because Major Blutnikov wouldn't let you leave if he suspected Malia isn't Bruma-free. And trust me, he'd know the minute I started up the MRI-scanner. Fortunately, I happen to know he's otherwise engaged at the clinic today, or he'd be keen to hear about your departure."

Which explained why they had to go to the shuttle a day early. It didn't explain much of anything else, though.

"It's her brain we're talking about," Jake said. "As much as I don't want to be stuck here, we can't just leave on the assumption that she's fine. They don't have the equipment down on Blue Two to properly check her out."

Doctor Venus nodded, firmly but not looking worried. "I can't rule out that there's a Bruma fetus in her head. But I think there's a good chance we're dealing with something else."

He turned to the young man. "Cai here was the first human host to a Bruma embryo. He has another explanation for what the tickling means. Cai?"

"It's not tickling," Cai replied in English with distinct Cantonese intonation. "It's the lingering effect of the Bruma. I don't feel them all the time, but they are there."

A lingering effect. At once Jake was flooded by fear for Malia, and fear of being locked away with her indefinitely again.

"What does that mean?" Jake said. "What lingers?"

"Nothing physical," Dr. Venus said. "I've seen Cai's scans, and there are no embryos anywhere in his body."

"Did I say I had Bruma in me?" Cai asked.

Jake felt Cai's glare as if the young man had to explain the most basic thing in the world.

"I have two sons," Cai continued. "One young and fast, always running in circles, always playing. One larger and calmer, contemplating life. He's a philosopher. I have contact with them both, but they don't live in me any longer. My first son shares his moods with me quite often. He is very, very far away, but the Bruma don't measure distances the same way we do. From what the Doctor tells me, Malia's first daughter is the same variety as my second son, so that one probably hasn't spoken to her yet. But her last four children will be playing by now, like my firstborn."

"Wait, your Bruma sons?" Andrea asked. "Who talk to you? What . . . they're telepaths? Did they leave something in your head? "

Cai threw up his hands. "I told you they wouldn't understand!" A litany of what Jake supposed was Mandarin curses followed.

"Cai is in contact with the Bruma he gave birth to," Doctor Venus said. "Malia is the mother of five Bruma babies. I think it's a fair assumption that Malia recently had her first telepathic contact with her children. The oldest hasn't matured enough for conversation yet, but the wee ones are probably communicating now. Their thoughts and feelings are likely what she describes as 'tickling.'"

Jake lowered his voice so Malia wouldn't hear him. "Likely? Probably? If there's still Bruma stuff left in her head, I want it out! We don't know what it'll do to her. What if she hemorrhages when we go downside? What if they take over her mind to control her?"

"They're her children," Cai said. "They won't do that."

Something in Jake wanted to grab Cai and scream
She's my daughter
. But Andrea spoke before he did.

"Is the Major keeping you on a short leash, Cai?" Her voice was full of kindness, and Jake knew that her empathy was helping them a hundred times more than his aggravation.