Trident's Forge, page 28
Benson struggled for an example until one presented itself. “If you counted every yulka bean in a harvest, it would be millions.”
Kexx’s eyes widened as he tried to process the concept. “Why would you ever need numbers so large?”
Benson couldn’t help but chuckle, thinking of the tens of trillions of kilometers the Ark had traveled to get here. “Trust me, someday soon, your people will need numbers much bigger than even that. Anyway, every few tens of millions of years, a huge asteroid would hit Earth and wipe out all life much bigger than this.” Benson held his hands approximately mouse-length apart. “Every time it happened, it took life a very long time to regroup. And here, we assumed an asteroid that big was hitting your world ten times as often. Our, er, wise men didn’t think that something as smart as humans could have grown up quickly enough between the strikes.”
Kexx nodded along, absorbing the lesson. “You didn’t know about our caves,” he reasoned.
Benson shook his head. “No, we didn’t.”
Kexx adjusted his legs and sat up a little straighter before continuing. “The number of times Cuut’s Seeds have razed the surface and sent us into the safety of Xis’s womb has been lost to memory, but it surely numbers in the hundreds. Sometimes it’s only a year before Cuut relents and the clouds give way to sunlight again. Sometimes, it’s much longer. Once, a thousand years ago, an entire generation passed below ground, dwindling as the food ran out until there were only so many left as the cave fungus could feed.”
“How many was that?” Benson asked. Kexx held up both his hands and splayed his eight fingers. A fullhand, as the Atlantians counted. “Eight? Your entire civilization is based on only eight people?”
“So the legend goes.”
Benson blanched. He remembered reading once about a great population bottleneck in human prehistory. But even that cataclysm had only reduced their numbers to a few thousand, not single digits. Suddenly, the Atlantians’ huge litters of young didn’t seem like such a bad evolutionary tactic. It could all just be an overblown legend, of course, but Benson knew just enough about anthropology not to dismiss native mythology out of hand. There were usually more than a few kernels of truth hidden in them.
Kexx continued. “It is said we once had many fingers, like the dux’ah or the ulik, but after the Shrinking, Cuut changed our hands, one finger to represent each of the chosen, so that we would never forget the lesson.”
“Which was?”
“Do more with less.”
Benson considered what he’d just heard, and what it told him about the Atlantians. As alien as they had seemed when he’d landed little more than a week before, it was hard to avoid the parallels. Disasters beyond their control or comprehension had decimated both of them, reduced their societies to a shell of their former selves and driven them into exile from the world they knew, forced to live for years on the barest essentials, leaving lasting scars on their collective psyches.
All things considered, Benson figured exile on board the Ark had probably been more comfortable.
“When was the last time your people were forced below ground?” Benson asked.
“Cuut has been lenient since the Shrinking. Seeds have still fallen, but they’ve been small, their clouds lasting Varrs, not years. It’s why we’ve had the time to build our villages and roads. Still, many believe we have forgotten Cuut’s lessons, that our expansion taunts zer, and that we are overdue for another reckoning.”
Benson could only chuckle at that. “Well, they weren’t exactly wrong. You would have gotten hit last year if we hadn’t caught it in time. Big sucker, too.”
Kexx’s face went pale in a way that not even Benson could miss. “I… I don’t understand. What do you mean?”
“I mean we’ve been mapping all the, er, seeds around your world since before we arrived and tracking the ones big enough to be dangerous. One was on course to strike, so we shot it with a…” How did you explain a laser to someone with stone-age tech? “A spear made of light and knocked it out of the way. As long as we’re here, you’re never going to have to worry about Cuut’s Seeds again.”
“That’s not possible,” Kexx said flatly. “You would have to be gods yourselves to interfere with Cuut’s will.”
Benson realized he had walked out onto the thin ice of religious orthodoxy. Of all the Atlantians he’d spoken with, Kexx was easily the most rational and levelheaded, doubtless a byproduct of zer years as the one person in zer village tasked with seeing past everyone’s bullshit. But apparently even ze had zer limits.
Benson proceeded cautiously. “That may be true. But the seeds, the asteroids, are just rock and ice. Some are tiny, no bigger than a bean, some are as big as cities. But they’re still just rocks. They don’t have a will. They just roam around out there, zipping through space until they hit something. But if you hit them hard enough, they move.”
Kexx, still pale as a sheet, shook his head. “That would be like hitting a spear in flight with another spear.”
Benson smirked. “Oh, it’s much harder than that. You can’t even imagine how fast things move around up there, but we do it all the time. On the way here, our ship had to hit dust no bigger than pebbles dozens, even hundreds of times a day.” Benson had a sudden, chilling flashback to tumbling through space after a bit of stellar dust the size of a grain of rice, just below the Ark’s radar threshold, nearly vaporized his EVA pod. He’d almost died that day. It was not one of his fonder memories.
He shook himself back into the moment. “Anyway, if we can hit pebbles, hitting a mountain is child’s play.”
“Varr,” Kexx said quietly, reverently.
“I’ve heard you say that before. What does it mean?”
Kexx collected himself silently. “Varr is… was Cuut’s mate. Ze was exiled after the Shrinking for betraying Cuut and siding with Xis to try and shield us from Cuut’s judgment.”
Benson listened intently. A trinity of gods. It made sense, considering the Atlantian’s apparent three-gender arrangement. Certainly more sense than the contortions the prelaunch Catholics had to go through to explain their Trinity.
“Varr fought with Cuut for zer children for three years without rest, causing the ground to shake and the sky to burn, until the fight ended in a draw. Unable to beat Cuut or change zer mind, yet also unable to bring zerself to kill zer lover, Varr accepted defeat, but promised to return once Cuut’s loneliness was too great. Now, ze visits eleven times each year, hoping Cuut will finally listen to reason.”
Moon, Benson realized, Varr was the name of their moon. “And stop sending seeds to destroy the world and drive your people underground,” Benson finished for zer.
“How did you know that?”
“I’ve read a lot of stories. You pick up on the patterns.”
Kexx nodded, some light and color returning to zer face. “When this becomes common knowledge, there will be many who believe your people are emissaries of Varr zerself. Many already believe this.”
“Are you one of them?”
“Are you of Varr?” Kexx asked, zer cautious, deliberate mind crashing headlong into a long-repressed childhood faith.
A buried memory from one of Theresa and Bryan’s first dates at the classic movie theater in Avalon module put a smile on his face. He couldn’t remember the film’s title, but a line jumped out regardless. Ray, when someone asks you if you’re a god, you say YES!
“No, Kexx, we’re not gods. I know it sounds like it sometimes, but we haven’t done anything your people couldn’t do with enough time.”
“But much less time if we ally with you?”
Man, ze doesn’t beat around the bush, Benson thought. “I don’t think I’m the one to make that kind of offer, Kexx. I just want to find out who’s responsible for what happened to our people. Both of them.”
The conversation was interrupted by a flashing icon in Benson’s field of vision. The small solar array draped over his shoulder had finished recharging his satellite uplink. He had an hour window to update Shambhala on the day’s discoveries and to talk to his wife, maybe warn her off. He intended to use every second.
“If you’ll excuse me, Kexx, I have to talk to my people back in our city.”
Kexx nodded respectfully, then picked up zer pace and fell into formation at the head of the caravan to give Benson some privacy. He pulled the sat uplink out of his pack and unplugged it from the solar charger, then synched it up with his plant. Familiar icons appeared in his field of vision, including yet another software update notification demanding to be seen.
[Important Implant Software Update, Fixes Memory Leak Error #34788001. Install Now?]
Benson sighed his annoyance. Whoever was writing code for the updates and patches had the most secure job in all of human society. he asked his plant OS.
[Less Than One Minute.]
Fine, whatever, he thought. If he didn’t do it now, it would just keep popping up before every link, wasting even more time.
he said internally.
The flashing icon disappeared, replaced by a green download status bar. It filled up in less than five seconds. A small file, then. Good.
[Install Now?] it asked.
Benson said. he added, knowing full well it wouldn’t make anything happen faster, but feeling satisfied for having said it anyway. The cursor in his mind’s eye turned into a small spinning circle.
[Installation Complete]
No sooner than the message appeared, Benson’s vision blurred as his plant displays turned to static and noise. A sharp pain struck his chest, like being impaled. Benson’s hand shot up to his heart, certain it would find the shaft of a spear sticking out of it, but it grabbed only the damp cloth of his sweat-soaked shirt.
“Mei!” Benson shouted in sudden, all-engulfing panic.
“Me….” His breath left him as his vison faded to black.
The last thing Bryan Benson felt was a sensation of falling.
Twenty-Eight
Theresa and Korolev sat in her office and stared at each other in stunned silence. The news of Captain Mahama’s death hadn’t been made public yet, but it wouldn’t be long before it leaked out somehow. News was even better than helium at escaping whatever tried to contain it. Reluctantly, and under pressure from the acting administrator, Theresa had ordered twenty of her newly recruited reserve officers to mobilize in preparation for whatever civil upheaval accompanied the news.
Korolev broke the awkward quiet. “They’ve only been drilling for three days, chief.”
“I know, Pavel.”
“And they haven’t done any crowd control training.”
“I know, Pavel.”
“And just mustering them is going to let people know something is up.”
“I know, Pavel!” Theresa snapped at her subordinate, surprising both him and herself. She took a deep, calming breath. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to shout. But I already said all of these things to Administrator Merick, and he still wants them activated. And we follow orders around here until and unless we have a very compelling reason not to.”
Korolev shrank a bit, like a scolded puppy. Or what Theresa guessed a scolded puppy looked like. “I understand, ma’am. And I wasn’t suggesting we disobey. I’m just…”
“Worried,” Theresa finished for him. “Well, so am I. You’d be stupid not to be, and it’s good that you’re recognizing these things. But you’re trying to do a job one level above your pay grade, at least for now. What I need from you right now is to know that you’re going to take these stupid orders and do your best to unfuck them on the ground. Can you do that?”
“You know I will, ma’am.”
“OK, so how are you going to do it?”
Korolev rubbed his chin as he contemplated the question. Finally, he answered. “Pair them up, then link them with one of our existing constables as three-man units, and make it clear that the constable is in charge.”
“And what do you do with the hotheads?” Theresa asked. “You’re talking about football players, after all. Some of them are more than a little testosterone-soaked.”
“Assign them to female constables,” Korolev said without hesitating. “They might want to show off for each other, but they’ll think twice about looking like goons in front of a lady.”
Theresa smirked. “I don’t know if that’s always been my experience, but I’m going to let you write the roster assignments. Deal?” Korolev nodded enthusiastically. “I thought you’d like that.”
Korolev nodded his thanks, but didn’t move. Instead, he shuffled uncomfortably in his seat. “Is there something else, Pavel?”
“Yeah, maybe. I guess.”
“Out with it, then.”
“It’s just that… The captain dying doesn’t make any sense, does it?”
“The universe is under no constraints to make sense to us,” Theresa replied. “Still, no, it doesn’t.”
“People her age don’t die of heart attacks.”
“It’s rare, I’ll grant you, but the stress of command can wear on a person, and she’d been in the chair for longer than anyone in decades. That, and she was alone in her quarters when it happened, with the door locked. Like, physically locked, which was why the medics couldn’t get to her in time to resuscitate. So unless we’re talking about ghosts…”
“But so soon after Valmassoi? That doesn’t strike you as odd?”
“Valmassoi died of spear poisoning, Pavel. They’re hardly related.”
“Did he, though?”
“You were there. Are you telling me you’re not sure how he died?”
“No, well, maybe. Look, Valmassoi was hurt bad, really messed up. But we got his vitals stabilized on the flight back. He was holding on right up until final approach when his heart just stopped. No warning, no change in his vitals, it just quit. Like someone flipped a switch. I didn’t think much about it at the time, but now…”
“Now it sounds exactly like what happened to the captain,” Theresa said.
Korolev shrugged. “It’s an odd coincidence.”
“It’s a convenient coincidence,” Theresa said, echoing what her husband had said when she broke the news to him over the link. “For someone, at least. OK, Pavel, I’m on board with the possibility, but how does someone stop a heart at will without touching the person?”
Korolev held up his stun-stick. “We induce seizures without touching people. How hard would it be to do the same thing to a heart?”
“What, through our plants?” Theresa said in disbelief. But the suggestion was anything but crazy. The plant was integrated with the brain before someone even left the tank. It was wired into the visual and auditory senses, monitored brain activity, body chemistry, vital signs, and in the case of their stun-sticks could even interrupt normal brain function through an electrical pulse. What if someone found a back door, or exploited a bit of code to redirect that pulse to a different part of the brain and shut off the signals that reminded the heart to keep beating?
Theresa whistled low. “Hold that thought.” She punched in Dr Russell’s contact info on her plant and made the call.
Theresa cut her off.
Russell said uncertainly.
Theresa cut the call and turned back to Korolev. “I’m going to have dinner with Dr Russell. We’ll see what she thinks. No offense, Pavel, but I really hope you’re wrong.”
“Tell me about it,” Korolev said.
“Still, I don’t think they’d risk using it openly.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Well it’s not like you could hide a dozen sudden heart attack deaths in healthy people, could you?” Theresa rubbed her cheek. “No, if that’s what’s happening here, they’re using it as a last resort. They organized the raid on the Atlantian village somehow, hoping he’d be killed during the battle. That was the plan.”
“And when I saved him, they didn’t have any choice but to zap him.”
“Exactly, and he’d been so badly wounded that no one would question the cause of death. Then they get Mahama locked alone in her own room. Boom, no evidence of foul play, no suspects, no suspicion. But if one of us dies of a heart attack in the middle of trying to make an arrest for building a heart attack machine, that would be a little harder to cover up.”
“Not that we’d be around to enjoy watching their trial.”
“True, but–” Theresa jumped as something struck her office window hard enough to shatter it. Korolev was on his feet and moving for the door with his stun-stick in hand before she had time to blink. A spiderweb of cracks in the window prevented her from seeing what was happening outside, so she stood to follow, but Korolev closed the door and put his back to it.
“We’d better grab our riot gear, chief.”
* * *
Theresa shouted through her plant directly into the minds of the crowd, yet still barely audible over the surging noise.
Word of Captain Mahama’s death leaked even faster than Theresa feared it would. Administrator Merick had issued a statement on the steps of the Beehive to address the rumors and eulogize their fallen leader in a transparent bid to boost his visibility and standing with the voting public. After a respectful mourning period of no more than thirty seconds, the good people of Shambhala had taken to the streets in force. Theresa’s constables barely had time to equip and meet them before the wave reached the Beehive. Their line was shaky and anxious, but holding.
Kexx’s eyes widened as he tried to process the concept. “Why would you ever need numbers so large?”
Benson couldn’t help but chuckle, thinking of the tens of trillions of kilometers the Ark had traveled to get here. “Trust me, someday soon, your people will need numbers much bigger than even that. Anyway, every few tens of millions of years, a huge asteroid would hit Earth and wipe out all life much bigger than this.” Benson held his hands approximately mouse-length apart. “Every time it happened, it took life a very long time to regroup. And here, we assumed an asteroid that big was hitting your world ten times as often. Our, er, wise men didn’t think that something as smart as humans could have grown up quickly enough between the strikes.”
Kexx nodded along, absorbing the lesson. “You didn’t know about our caves,” he reasoned.
Benson shook his head. “No, we didn’t.”
Kexx adjusted his legs and sat up a little straighter before continuing. “The number of times Cuut’s Seeds have razed the surface and sent us into the safety of Xis’s womb has been lost to memory, but it surely numbers in the hundreds. Sometimes it’s only a year before Cuut relents and the clouds give way to sunlight again. Sometimes, it’s much longer. Once, a thousand years ago, an entire generation passed below ground, dwindling as the food ran out until there were only so many left as the cave fungus could feed.”
“How many was that?” Benson asked. Kexx held up both his hands and splayed his eight fingers. A fullhand, as the Atlantians counted. “Eight? Your entire civilization is based on only eight people?”
“So the legend goes.”
Benson blanched. He remembered reading once about a great population bottleneck in human prehistory. But even that cataclysm had only reduced their numbers to a few thousand, not single digits. Suddenly, the Atlantians’ huge litters of young didn’t seem like such a bad evolutionary tactic. It could all just be an overblown legend, of course, but Benson knew just enough about anthropology not to dismiss native mythology out of hand. There were usually more than a few kernels of truth hidden in them.
Kexx continued. “It is said we once had many fingers, like the dux’ah or the ulik, but after the Shrinking, Cuut changed our hands, one finger to represent each of the chosen, so that we would never forget the lesson.”
“Which was?”
“Do more with less.”
Benson considered what he’d just heard, and what it told him about the Atlantians. As alien as they had seemed when he’d landed little more than a week before, it was hard to avoid the parallels. Disasters beyond their control or comprehension had decimated both of them, reduced their societies to a shell of their former selves and driven them into exile from the world they knew, forced to live for years on the barest essentials, leaving lasting scars on their collective psyches.
All things considered, Benson figured exile on board the Ark had probably been more comfortable.
“When was the last time your people were forced below ground?” Benson asked.
“Cuut has been lenient since the Shrinking. Seeds have still fallen, but they’ve been small, their clouds lasting Varrs, not years. It’s why we’ve had the time to build our villages and roads. Still, many believe we have forgotten Cuut’s lessons, that our expansion taunts zer, and that we are overdue for another reckoning.”
Benson could only chuckle at that. “Well, they weren’t exactly wrong. You would have gotten hit last year if we hadn’t caught it in time. Big sucker, too.”
Kexx’s face went pale in a way that not even Benson could miss. “I… I don’t understand. What do you mean?”
“I mean we’ve been mapping all the, er, seeds around your world since before we arrived and tracking the ones big enough to be dangerous. One was on course to strike, so we shot it with a…” How did you explain a laser to someone with stone-age tech? “A spear made of light and knocked it out of the way. As long as we’re here, you’re never going to have to worry about Cuut’s Seeds again.”
“That’s not possible,” Kexx said flatly. “You would have to be gods yourselves to interfere with Cuut’s will.”
Benson realized he had walked out onto the thin ice of religious orthodoxy. Of all the Atlantians he’d spoken with, Kexx was easily the most rational and levelheaded, doubtless a byproduct of zer years as the one person in zer village tasked with seeing past everyone’s bullshit. But apparently even ze had zer limits.
Benson proceeded cautiously. “That may be true. But the seeds, the asteroids, are just rock and ice. Some are tiny, no bigger than a bean, some are as big as cities. But they’re still just rocks. They don’t have a will. They just roam around out there, zipping through space until they hit something. But if you hit them hard enough, they move.”
Kexx, still pale as a sheet, shook his head. “That would be like hitting a spear in flight with another spear.”
Benson smirked. “Oh, it’s much harder than that. You can’t even imagine how fast things move around up there, but we do it all the time. On the way here, our ship had to hit dust no bigger than pebbles dozens, even hundreds of times a day.” Benson had a sudden, chilling flashback to tumbling through space after a bit of stellar dust the size of a grain of rice, just below the Ark’s radar threshold, nearly vaporized his EVA pod. He’d almost died that day. It was not one of his fonder memories.
He shook himself back into the moment. “Anyway, if we can hit pebbles, hitting a mountain is child’s play.”
“Varr,” Kexx said quietly, reverently.
“I’ve heard you say that before. What does it mean?”
Kexx collected himself silently. “Varr is… was Cuut’s mate. Ze was exiled after the Shrinking for betraying Cuut and siding with Xis to try and shield us from Cuut’s judgment.”
Benson listened intently. A trinity of gods. It made sense, considering the Atlantian’s apparent three-gender arrangement. Certainly more sense than the contortions the prelaunch Catholics had to go through to explain their Trinity.
“Varr fought with Cuut for zer children for three years without rest, causing the ground to shake and the sky to burn, until the fight ended in a draw. Unable to beat Cuut or change zer mind, yet also unable to bring zerself to kill zer lover, Varr accepted defeat, but promised to return once Cuut’s loneliness was too great. Now, ze visits eleven times each year, hoping Cuut will finally listen to reason.”
Moon, Benson realized, Varr was the name of their moon. “And stop sending seeds to destroy the world and drive your people underground,” Benson finished for zer.
“How did you know that?”
“I’ve read a lot of stories. You pick up on the patterns.”
Kexx nodded, some light and color returning to zer face. “When this becomes common knowledge, there will be many who believe your people are emissaries of Varr zerself. Many already believe this.”
“Are you one of them?”
“Are you of Varr?” Kexx asked, zer cautious, deliberate mind crashing headlong into a long-repressed childhood faith.
A buried memory from one of Theresa and Bryan’s first dates at the classic movie theater in Avalon module put a smile on his face. He couldn’t remember the film’s title, but a line jumped out regardless. Ray, when someone asks you if you’re a god, you say YES!
“No, Kexx, we’re not gods. I know it sounds like it sometimes, but we haven’t done anything your people couldn’t do with enough time.”
“But much less time if we ally with you?”
Man, ze doesn’t beat around the bush, Benson thought. “I don’t think I’m the one to make that kind of offer, Kexx. I just want to find out who’s responsible for what happened to our people. Both of them.”
The conversation was interrupted by a flashing icon in Benson’s field of vision. The small solar array draped over his shoulder had finished recharging his satellite uplink. He had an hour window to update Shambhala on the day’s discoveries and to talk to his wife, maybe warn her off. He intended to use every second.
“If you’ll excuse me, Kexx, I have to talk to my people back in our city.”
Kexx nodded respectfully, then picked up zer pace and fell into formation at the head of the caravan to give Benson some privacy. He pulled the sat uplink out of his pack and unplugged it from the solar charger, then synched it up with his plant. Familiar icons appeared in his field of vision, including yet another software update notification demanding to be seen.
[Important Implant Software Update, Fixes Memory Leak Error #34788001. Install Now?]
Benson sighed his annoyance. Whoever was writing code for the updates and patches had the most secure job in all of human society.
[Less Than One Minute.]
Fine, whatever, he thought. If he didn’t do it now, it would just keep popping up before every link, wasting even more time.
The flashing icon disappeared, replaced by a green download status bar. It filled up in less than five seconds. A small file, then. Good.
[Install Now?] it asked.
[Installation Complete]
No sooner than the message appeared, Benson’s vision blurred as his plant displays turned to static and noise. A sharp pain struck his chest, like being impaled. Benson’s hand shot up to his heart, certain it would find the shaft of a spear sticking out of it, but it grabbed only the damp cloth of his sweat-soaked shirt.
“Mei!” Benson shouted in sudden, all-engulfing panic.
“Me….” His breath left him as his vison faded to black.
The last thing Bryan Benson felt was a sensation of falling.
Twenty-Eight
Theresa and Korolev sat in her office and stared at each other in stunned silence. The news of Captain Mahama’s death hadn’t been made public yet, but it wouldn’t be long before it leaked out somehow. News was even better than helium at escaping whatever tried to contain it. Reluctantly, and under pressure from the acting administrator, Theresa had ordered twenty of her newly recruited reserve officers to mobilize in preparation for whatever civil upheaval accompanied the news.
Korolev broke the awkward quiet. “They’ve only been drilling for three days, chief.”
“I know, Pavel.”
“And they haven’t done any crowd control training.”
“I know, Pavel.”
“And just mustering them is going to let people know something is up.”
“I know, Pavel!” Theresa snapped at her subordinate, surprising both him and herself. She took a deep, calming breath. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to shout. But I already said all of these things to Administrator Merick, and he still wants them activated. And we follow orders around here until and unless we have a very compelling reason not to.”
Korolev shrank a bit, like a scolded puppy. Or what Theresa guessed a scolded puppy looked like. “I understand, ma’am. And I wasn’t suggesting we disobey. I’m just…”
“Worried,” Theresa finished for him. “Well, so am I. You’d be stupid not to be, and it’s good that you’re recognizing these things. But you’re trying to do a job one level above your pay grade, at least for now. What I need from you right now is to know that you’re going to take these stupid orders and do your best to unfuck them on the ground. Can you do that?”
“You know I will, ma’am.”
“OK, so how are you going to do it?”
Korolev rubbed his chin as he contemplated the question. Finally, he answered. “Pair them up, then link them with one of our existing constables as three-man units, and make it clear that the constable is in charge.”
“And what do you do with the hotheads?” Theresa asked. “You’re talking about football players, after all. Some of them are more than a little testosterone-soaked.”
“Assign them to female constables,” Korolev said without hesitating. “They might want to show off for each other, but they’ll think twice about looking like goons in front of a lady.”
Theresa smirked. “I don’t know if that’s always been my experience, but I’m going to let you write the roster assignments. Deal?” Korolev nodded enthusiastically. “I thought you’d like that.”
Korolev nodded his thanks, but didn’t move. Instead, he shuffled uncomfortably in his seat. “Is there something else, Pavel?”
“Yeah, maybe. I guess.”
“Out with it, then.”
“It’s just that… The captain dying doesn’t make any sense, does it?”
“The universe is under no constraints to make sense to us,” Theresa replied. “Still, no, it doesn’t.”
“People her age don’t die of heart attacks.”
“It’s rare, I’ll grant you, but the stress of command can wear on a person, and she’d been in the chair for longer than anyone in decades. That, and she was alone in her quarters when it happened, with the door locked. Like, physically locked, which was why the medics couldn’t get to her in time to resuscitate. So unless we’re talking about ghosts…”
“But so soon after Valmassoi? That doesn’t strike you as odd?”
“Valmassoi died of spear poisoning, Pavel. They’re hardly related.”
“Did he, though?”
“You were there. Are you telling me you’re not sure how he died?”
“No, well, maybe. Look, Valmassoi was hurt bad, really messed up. But we got his vitals stabilized on the flight back. He was holding on right up until final approach when his heart just stopped. No warning, no change in his vitals, it just quit. Like someone flipped a switch. I didn’t think much about it at the time, but now…”
“Now it sounds exactly like what happened to the captain,” Theresa said.
Korolev shrugged. “It’s an odd coincidence.”
“It’s a convenient coincidence,” Theresa said, echoing what her husband had said when she broke the news to him over the link. “For someone, at least. OK, Pavel, I’m on board with the possibility, but how does someone stop a heart at will without touching the person?”
Korolev held up his stun-stick. “We induce seizures without touching people. How hard would it be to do the same thing to a heart?”
“What, through our plants?” Theresa said in disbelief. But the suggestion was anything but crazy. The plant was integrated with the brain before someone even left the tank. It was wired into the visual and auditory senses, monitored brain activity, body chemistry, vital signs, and in the case of their stun-sticks could even interrupt normal brain function through an electrical pulse. What if someone found a back door, or exploited a bit of code to redirect that pulse to a different part of the brain and shut off the signals that reminded the heart to keep beating?
Theresa whistled low. “Hold that thought.” She punched in Dr Russell’s contact info on her plant and made the call.
Theresa cut the call and turned back to Korolev. “I’m going to have dinner with Dr Russell. We’ll see what she thinks. No offense, Pavel, but I really hope you’re wrong.”
“Tell me about it,” Korolev said.
“Still, I don’t think they’d risk using it openly.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Well it’s not like you could hide a dozen sudden heart attack deaths in healthy people, could you?” Theresa rubbed her cheek. “No, if that’s what’s happening here, they’re using it as a last resort. They organized the raid on the Atlantian village somehow, hoping he’d be killed during the battle. That was the plan.”
“And when I saved him, they didn’t have any choice but to zap him.”
“Exactly, and he’d been so badly wounded that no one would question the cause of death. Then they get Mahama locked alone in her own room. Boom, no evidence of foul play, no suspects, no suspicion. But if one of us dies of a heart attack in the middle of trying to make an arrest for building a heart attack machine, that would be a little harder to cover up.”
“Not that we’d be around to enjoy watching their trial.”
“True, but–” Theresa jumped as something struck her office window hard enough to shatter it. Korolev was on his feet and moving for the door with his stun-stick in hand before she had time to blink. A spiderweb of cracks in the window prevented her from seeing what was happening outside, so she stood to follow, but Korolev closed the door and put his back to it.
“We’d better grab our riot gear, chief.”
* * *
Word of Captain Mahama’s death leaked even faster than Theresa feared it would. Administrator Merick had issued a statement on the steps of the Beehive to address the rumors and eulogize their fallen leader in a transparent bid to boost his visibility and standing with the voting public. After a respectful mourning period of no more than thirty seconds, the good people of Shambhala had taken to the streets in force. Theresa’s constables barely had time to equip and meet them before the wave reached the Beehive. Their line was shaky and anxious, but holding.
