Rules of Conflict (10 page)

Jani nodded. “And if he hadn’t come to his senses, as you say—we
prefer the phrase
turned traitor
, the
C
in NUVA-SCAN was his
price—Everhard would not have lost DC and the rest of the Eastern Seaboard
wouldn’t have dominoed in response. And there would have been no March to
Albany.”

“Yes, ma’am, but—”

“Seven thousand four-hundred eighteen losers died during that
march. Their bodies were sprayed with dissolvant and tossed in ditches because
your side judged
them
the traitors, undeserving of proper burial. A
many-times-great-grandfather of mine was one of those losers. The only place
his name is inscribed is in a Bible my father keeps in his workroom. Like I
said, it’s a matter of perspective.”

Don nodded. He actually seemed to be listening, which was more
than many Earthbounders did. “Can you say your side wouldn’t have done the same
thing if they’d won?”

Jani hesitated. She was colony, yes, and proud to be so. But life
had left her few illusions about people, especially after the blood started
flowing. “No, I can’t. But that’s not the point. The point is, all the dead
merit remembrance. Even the ones who lost. Because first you forget who, and
then you forget why. And then it happens all over again.”

The skimmer turned onto the Fort Sheridan entry and passed beneath
the Gate’s main archway. The cabin darkened; the names inscribed inside the
arch winked and faded. Then the view lightened; the sight of the numerous shade
trees and multicolored shrubbery decorating Sheridan’s rolling lawns dissipated
the tension.

Borgie would have been in heaven,
Jani thought as they
passed teeming walkways that joined row after row of low-slung white-and-tan
buildings. Her late sergeant hadn’t been the most conventional of Spacers, but
if you’d scratched him, he’d have bled blue and grey. He’d often told her that
the only reason he’d ever visit Earth would be to walk the paths at Fort
Sheridan.
I wish you were here.
She would have enjoyed listening to his
blunt-edged take on her current predicament. She could have used the laugh.

“We’ll be checking you into the Main Hospital first.” Friesian
leaned close to Jani so he could speak softly. “If you’re through with the
history lecture, that is.” He sat back, eyes slitting as though a headache had
placed a call.

In contrast to the glass-walled grandeur of every Neoclona
facility Jani had ever seen, Fort Sheridan’s Main Hospital showed squat and
homely. Its white-cement surfaces were smooth and squared off, its windows
short and narrow. Only ten floors, but what it lacked in height, it made up for
in sprawl. Patients undergoing fitness therapy could get their day’s exercise
simply by trotting around its circumference.

Lou took it upon himself to maneuver Jani’s chair to the hospital
entry as Friesian supervised Don’s refit of the skimmer. “
Bienvenu à
Chicago, Capitaine
,” he whispered as he leaned forward to adjust the lift
settings, touching his fingers to his forehead in a surreptitious salute.

“
Vous êtes un Manxman, Lieutenant
?” Jani didn’t need to
ask—the harsh tones of Man French branded him easily.

“
Oui, Capitaine
.” He backed away as Friesian approached. “
Vive
la Manche
,” he mouthed, using the Channel Worlder’s nickname for their
network of planets.

A subversive Manxman.
Jani touched her own forehead in
return.
Quite a happy family the Service has here.
She sat back with a
jolt as Friesian propelled her a shade faster than necessary into the cool
depths of the hospital.

“Turn slowly, and walk back toward me.”

As Jani tried to reverse her course, her right knee buckled. She
grabbed the rails of her treadway just in time to keep from falling. “This
thing is hard to walk on.”

“There has been motor-nerve axon damage,” a voice piped from
behind the large analyzer that received signals from both the treadway and the
numerous sensor buttons that studded Jani’s arms, legs, trunk, and back. “I’m
downloading the specific sites into her chart now.”

The doctor who stood at the far end of the track offered Jani a
quiet smile. Tall, thin, tired-looking—Hugh Tellinn’s blond brother. “We’ll be
starting rebuild immediately. Along with digestive-enzyme adjustment and heme
infusion.” He held out his hand and helped her down the two short steps to the
floor so the waiting nurse could pluck the buttons. “Are you feeling all right,
Jani? You look dazed.”

“I didn’t expect to get herded into myotherapy so quickly.” She
glanced at the man’s name tag.
R. Pimentel.
No rank designator visible
on his medwhite shirt. Jani had yet to hear a title other than
Nurse
or
Doctor
over the past few hours, but she figured Pimentel for at least a major, judging
from the way the other white coats deferred to him. Possibly even a colonel.

“We’ve been receiving your MedRecs via message central transmit
for the past ten days, so we had a good idea what to expect. The
Reina
’s
medical officer had a lot to send—let’s just say this department’s Misty
account has topped out for the quarter.” He continued to support her as they
walked out of the therapy room and into an adjoining office. “Now, we need to
ascertain your current status, judge whether it has improved or worsened, and
commence the appropriate treatments as soon as possible.” He helped Jani lower
into a visitor’s chair, then took a seat on the other side of the cluttered
desk.

Jani looked around. Two filled bookcases, double-stacked with
bound volumes and wafer folders. Holos of Admiral-General Hiroshi Mako and
Prime Minister Li Cao. A watercolor of a pleasant-looking woman holding a
little girl. “So what happened to me, Colonel?”

“Colonel?” Pimentel’s brows arched. “How did you arrive at that
conclusion?”

Jani pointed behind him, to the narrow window. “You have a view.”

“Well, I hate to break it to you, Captain, but this is Fort
Sheridan, and we have windows to spare.” Pimentel sat back. “But yes, I am a
colonel.”

“Full?”

“
Yes
. But I’m also a psychotherapeutic neurologist. Owing
to the types of conditions I treat, I find it easier for both me and my
patients if we leave the ranks in the lobby.” Pimentel picked up a stylus from
his desk and regarded the unlit tip. “We think the drug used to subdue you on
Felix triggered this idiosyncratic reaction of yours. We may be dealing with a
disease called porphyria, but thus far, we’ve been unable to identify the
specific genetic mutation.”

“A human genetic mutation?”

Pimentel hesitated. “For now. Until we have more data.”

“Neoclona has a lot of data—why don’t you request my file?”

Pimentel tapped the stylus on his knee. “Heme is manufactured in
the bone marrow and the liver. Heme in the bone marrow is incorporated into
hemoglobin; heme in the liver is incorporated into electron transport proteins,
some of which metabolize drugs. The synthesis of the molecule is complicated;
several intermediates and enzymes are involved. When a person possesses lower
than normal activity of one of the enzymes, the precursors build up in either
the bone marrow or the liver, depending on the enzyme involved.”

When he’s angry, he spouts techno.
Jani decided to play
good girl. He seemed to mean well—if she was nice to him, maybe he’d tell her
why she was talking to him in his office with his family’s picture on the wall
instead of in a locked room in the brig infirmary. “I’m deficient in one of
these enzymes?”

“Yes. Porphobilinogen deaminase, to be precise.”

“Your wife married you because of your way with words, didn’t
she?”

Pimentel looked startled for a moment. Then he grinned bashfully.
“PBG deaminase, for short. That makes your flavor acute intermittent porphyria.
Its cardinal symptoms are the abdominal pain you developed at Fort Constanza,
the psychotic episodes you experienced on the
Reina Adelaida
, and the
neuropathy, or muscle weakness, you’re showing now. It’s extremely rare these
days. Not life-threatening, usually—most people who have it don’t even realize
it. We normally only find it in the far-flung colonial outposts, where things
tend to slip through the cracks.”

“So people are usually born with it?”

“
Always
born with it. It’s a genetic disorder, not
something you acquire.”

“That depends, doesn’t it?”

Pimentel tossed the stylus back on his desk. “You know, whenever
two or more doctors get together in the same room, the talk eventually turns to
Neoclona’s first patient. ‘S-1.’ Shèrá-1. The woman John Shroud wanted to make
live forever.” He seemed to stare past the painting of his wife and daughter,
to someplace far away. “I’ve never met a legend.” He looked at Jani. “Do I
think something he did to you in Rauta Shèràa has come back to haunt you? I’m
by no means Dr. Shroud’s greatest fan, but I’d like to keep an open mind, for
now. First, we need to stabilize your diet and repair the nerve and liver
damage you’ve sustained.” He reached for his comport pad. “You look exhausted.
I’m going to have you taken to your room.”

“My room?”

“I’m admitting you, Captain.” The tired eyes grew steely. “I’ll
make it an order, if that’s the only thing you’ll accept.”

They gave her a private room, owing to her rank. Dinner
consisted of a fruit milk shake and dry toast; when she complained about the
sweetness of the shake, they scrounged hot sauce to kill the flavor. She waited
for Pimentel to burst in and order her out of his hospital for the murderer she
was, but all he did was poke his head in and say good night. She waited for the
guards to be posted outside her door, but they never came. She waited for
Friesian to come and inform her of the charges against her, but the
second-shift head nurse, a no-nonsense blonde named Morley, told her Pimentel
had asked him to hold off until tomorrow.

They’re not going to shoot me for Neumann’s murder; they’re
going to shock me to death.
Jani lay back against her soft Service-issue
pillows, in her dove grey Service-issue pajamas, and worried herself to sleep.

“Good morning, Jani.”

Jani looked up from her magazine to find the morning nurse
standing in the sunroom doorway.

“You have a visitor.” He stepped aside. “You can go in now.”

“It’s about time.” Lucien Pascal brushed past the man and strode
into the room. When his eyes locked with Jani’s he smiled broadly, at first
glance the walking equivalent of a bright summer day.

“Hello.” He dragged a chair over to the sunny corner Jani
occupied, white-blond hair flashing in the diffuse sunlight. He’d acquired a
tan since she’d last seen him—his grey short-sleeve looked silver against his
skin, now almost as brown as hers.

“How did you get in to see me ahead of my lawyer?” Jani watched
his shoulder muscles flex beneath the fitted shirt as he positioned his chair.
The southerly view wasn’t bad, either. “They’re not going to let him in until
this afternoon.”

Lucien held up his arm to show her the thin silver band encircling
his wrist. “Outpatient monitoring.”

“They let you come here for your takedowns? An Intelligence
officer?” Augmentation was one thing she and Lucien had in common, although his
prototypical version had boosted the nonempathetic aspect of his personality in
addition to adjusting his panic response. “I thought they’d put you in secure
lockdown in case you started talking.”

“No, I only come here for psych evals.” Lucien’s eyes, rich brown
and normally as lifeless as spent embers, flared with disdain. “I had my last
takedown at the Intelligence infirmary. Before that, they were supervised by
Eamon DeVries—he’s Anais’s personal physician.”

“Now that’s a match made in hell.” Jani shivered at the memory of
DeVries’ rough examinations.
Did that hurt, Kilian? Well, too damned bad.