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It had all sounded much more
plausible when his parents had explained it to him back in Alberta. Shanti’s
expression wasn’t helping. “You know, you can manage stress without getting
your head cracked open. There was no need for an implant.”

“Oh, but you should get one—they’re
great, they really are. They go in, and you don’t have to worry about
anything,” said Shanti. “You don’t have to count anything.”

“Is counting a problem for you?”
teased Philippe.

She rolled her eyes at him.
“Seriously, we all have them.”

“All the SFers?” Philippe asked,
shocked. He could see them all having to get implants for their eyes, but brain
implants seemed excessive, even for the SF.

“No, no.” She waved her hand. “All
the
Paxes.
”

“Really?” he said, thinking of
Kelly. “All of you?”

“Yeah, and if we say, ‘Hey, I think
we
should
take over the world after all!’ they explode.” Shanti made a
crashing noise with her mouth and pulled her hands slowly away from her head.

“Uh-uh,” Philippe said. “I think
I’m going to try to find another seat.”

“No, seriously. We all do, because
of our mom,” she said. “Mom—the woman we were cloned off of—they think she was
manic-depressive. She was Nigerian Army—you know, decorated, a big war hero.
But then she got heavily into self-medication, and she was dishonorably
discharged. So when the Old Man dangled a big bunch of money in front of her,
she took it, and then she spent all the money on drugs and none of it on food,
which is what killed her.”

“Did you ever meet her?” asked
Philippe.

“No, she died when we were five, we
never even knew about her until after we got out of there.” Her expression
became wistful. “I’d like to think that if she knew about us, maybe she—you
know, she would have thought that she had something to live for after all.”

She snapped back to herself.
“Anyway, they didn’t want us all to wind up the same way, so they gave us
implants. And it’s a big relief, you know—you never have to worry, if your
brain starts working funny, the implant just kicks right in and nips that shit
in the bud. That’s how mental illness works, you know—it starts small and you
let it go, and then you get big problems and you don’t know it, ’cuz by then
you’ve lost your mind. They make ’em for anxiety disorders, too.”

“Um, I can see the appeal, but I
think in my case, it’d be a permanent solution to what was really a temporary
problem,” Philippe replied. “I haven’t had these kinds of problems coping with
stress in my other jobs, and I think it was really a unique set of
circumstances this time around.”

Shanti raised an eyebrow. “Maybe
they make one for technophobia,” she said.

Philippe clucked at her. “So, why
were you back on Earth? Did you win the draw, or did you also cause an
interplanetary incident?”

“Oh, we’re getting fucking sued
again. Have I told you about that?” she asked. Philippe shook his head. “The
old man has some nephews and nieces and cousins—all folks who couldn’t be
bothered to look him up once in the 20 fucking years he was off being crazy in
the South Pacific. They’re all a bunch of fucking losers who are pissed that we
got his money. They’re like, You murdered this poor old man! And we’re like,
No, assholes, it was in self-defense—which it was, and the courts said so,
too—so fuck you, you spoiled brats, we’ve got a right to this money.”

“Huh,” said Philippe.

“Yeah, and the shit we went through
there toward the end, and these people have the nerve . . . it’s so fucked.
Anyway, according to the Union, the money’s fucking
ours
, so what they
keep trying to do is file shit with the national courts.” The anger mounted in
her voice. “Basically the only life plan these fucks ever had was to cash in
when the old man died, and there’s always a chance that one of the national
courts will want to stick it to the Union. So
now
one of his fucking
dipshit relatives—who probably wouldn’t have gotten anything even if we hadn’t
been in the will—crawled out of a koffie shop and filed another fucking suit,
so I came down for a family conference. Our lawyers say not to worry, but at
this point, I think we should countersue for legal costs every fucking time
they do this, because it’s getting fucking ridiculous.”

“I didn’t know about all that,”
said Philippe.

“It’s been going on fucking
forever,
and it needs to fucking die,” she said. “I mean, do you know what they
found when they searched the place after we surrendered?”

Philippe shook his head.

“Our entire sleeping area was wired
to blow.” Shanti shook her head. “The old man was always going on about this
Ultimate Weapon, and we were afraid that he was going to use it to wipe out the
population of the Earth—that was key to his whole plan, you know, the normal
people would all die, and then we would take over. And it never even occurred
to us that he meant
us,
his kids. He was going to wipe
us
out.

“We earned every fucking penny of
that money, and I will apologize to no one for it. Especially someone who just
sat on their ass and let it happen because they didn’t want to piss off their
rich, crazy uncle because then he might cut them out of his will.”

They talked a bit more until the
conversation began to lag, and then they read. They ate and napped. They had
the ship to themselves—they were on an emergency flight to Titan—so there
wasn’t anyone on board to ask about Arne.

“He’s had a hell of a time, I can
tell you that much,” said Cheep. “We’re bringing all kinds of crazy medical
shit on this run ’cuz the doc’s used it up or needs more for that poor bastard.
We got a ton of medication, and skin, and gut.”

“You
sew
wounds?” asked
Cheep. “Like, embroidery or something?”

They grilled Cheep and Pinky some
more, but the pilots had told them all they knew—Arne was extremely ill with
some alien bug that attacked his stomach, and George had been hard-pressed to
keep him alive.

When they docked, Philippe
immediately went into the infirmary. The place looked like a tornado hit
it—every cabinet door was open. His foot slipped on something on the floor. It
was a puddle of something dark that he couldn’t identify.

It’s probably better that way,
he
thought, noticing that the Cyclops arm had been taken out of the isolation unit
and thrown onto a counter.

There were four beds in the
infirmary, plus the isolation unit. George was curled up on one of the beds,
asleep. Philippe walked over to the clear walls of the isolation unit. Lying
there, his body utterly limp in the bed, a mask over his open mouth, was Arne.

Oh, God,
thought Philippe,
staring at the pale, drained body.

“Trang?” said a sleepy voice.

“George?” said Philippe quietly,
turning around and walking over to the doctor. “Don’t get up. I’m sure you need
to rest.”

George shook his head. “I just
wanted a little nap. I told Raoul and Gingko to go to sleep—we’ve been up
forever—and I was going to clean up in here, but. . . .”

“Uh, yeah,” said George, and then
turned to look at him. “Oh, no. You don’t have your gloves on. It’s all right,
I just need to neaten up.” He began putting the containers that had been
knocked over upright, putting supplies back in the cabinets and closing the
doors.

“Arne, God bless him,” said George,
gesturing vaguely in the direction of the isolation unit. “Arne
ate
alien
food. The Hosts had some, so he had some, too.”

“Oh,” said Philippe.

“You probably want to sit on the
bed, there. I’m going to get the wet vac going on the floor,” said George,
pointing to one of the beds. Philippe sat.

George kept talking. “The problem
wasn’t the food itself, it was something that grows in the food—some kind of
parasite. And it so happens that this parasite just
loves
the human
small intestine. That’s how lucky Arne was.”

He set the wet vac going and sat on
another bed, facing Philippe. The drone’s buffing wheels started on the stains
on the floor.

George looked down at the drone,
distractedly. “You know, at this point I’m kind of disappointed when these
things don’t talk to me like the Swimmers do.”

He shook his head, snapping himself
back into the moment.

“Anyway, of course I’ve got no idea
how to treat this parasite—it makes these big black tumors, I don’t know how,
and I keep cleaning them out and cleaning them out, and they keep growing back
and growing back. So we go to the Hosts, and they said, we have this poison for
it, but we’d never,
ever
use this stuff on a person. And I said, give it
to me, because I’ve got absolutely nothing, and this guy’s dead for sure. So
they send a shipment of this, this
pesticide,
and I don’t know what’s in
it, and I’m supposed to slap it around old Arne’s small intestine, and I don’t
know if he’s going to absorb it and it will poison him or what the hell’s going
to happen, but those tumors keep getting bigger by the minute. And it turns out
that this pest killer is beyond caustic, and it burned the hell out of his gut,
and I had to replace five meters of his small intestine with the artificial
gut. Unbelievable.”

“Is he going to live?” asked
Philippe.

“Fuck if I know,” said George. He
collected himself for a moment. “He’s not growing black potatoes in his gut
anymore, so, yeah, if they don’t come back, he’ll most likely live.”

They unloaded the medical supplies
with help from several SFers. Then Philippe grabbed his bag and headed with
some trepidation toward his room. According to George, if Arne survived, he had
a long recuperation period ahead of him. Once he was well enough to be moved,
he would be going straight from the infirmary to a medical facility on Earth.

That meant that Philippe could move
straight back into his old room—as soon as he packed up Arne’s stuff, a task
that struck Philippe as opportunistic and unsavory.

He walked into the office, then
turned around and walked back out. Patch was in the hallway.

“Patch?” Philippe said. “Why are
there gold things in the office?”

“Guy, have you been in your
conference room? There’s lots in there, too,” Patch replied. “They’re get-well
presents from the aliens. They say that the color gold, like, heals people on
Earth.”

“Who told them that?” asked
Philippe.

“Well,” said Patch, with a shrug.
“They say you did.”

Philippe shook his head. It was
bizarre, but right now, it wasn’t really important. “Have we been keeping the
aliens posted about Arne’s condition?” he asked.

George hauled himself up to a
sitting position. “Well, there are no alarms going off, so that’s good,” he
said, then looked at some of the monitors. “It’s been three hours with no sign
of the parasite—you can tell them that’s good news; before it was coming back
every five minutes. He’s in critical but stable condition now. He’s young and
doesn’t have any underlying health problems. If the parasite stays gone, he may
well recover.”

It was like his first day on the
station all over again. There was a crowd of aliens standing around the
door—Philippe even saw a small group of White Spiders hanging out on the
ceiling—and underneath the various noises they were making was the continual
thrumming of several Hosts, who doubtless had been holding a vigil. Philippe
saw the familiar faces of Max and Moritz among them. He noticed that the
Pincushions were all wearing gold on their spikes, and the Magic Man—who had
showed up without being asked this time—was also gold.