The City Who Fought
- Автор: Маккефри Энн, Стирлинг Стивен Майкл
- Серия: brainship #4
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «The City Who Fought». Краткое содержание книги:
Simeon's love of wargaming would find unexpected uses when the brutal Kolnari attack the nearby colony planet, Bethel. Sheltering the colony's refugee's brought the city an invitation to serious trouble with Kolnari pirates.
"You thought Joseph could keep her in line?"
"Yes. I hoped that, because he would be nearby and considerate of her, she would turn more to him and less toward me."
"Not a bad reasoning," Simeon replied truthfully. "Sending her away might break whatever hold she has on reality."
Amos looked unreassured and more miserable than ever. He might be a good-looking man, but he sure had cornered the supply of gloomy looks.
"Today, you have said quite correctly that you are older than I, and also that in many ways you are wiser. Today I should have been the wiser." He shook his head sorrowfully and shuffled into his room like an old man.
Well, Simeon thought, what an interesting evening! Looks like the forecast for true love is-not smooth. Such marvelous material for teasing Channa. So tempting to see how she'd react. No! He had to keep his mind on more important things. Like that Rachel. The girl had shot out of that interview with Amos as if she'd lost her rag. Better keep an eye on her, he told himself. And so should Doctor Chaundra, if he's got the time. Most acute mental illness was chemical, or could be adjusted with the judicious use of neutralizing chemicals.
With a weary woof, Doctor Chaundra sat at his desk and, setting his coffee cup in the most spill-proof area available in the surface clutter, he keyed up his mail. It had been two days since he'd had an opportunity to look at it. Twenty-five attempted suicides, four of them among the refugee Bethelites who chose gruesomely old-fashioned methods. One had actually hanged herself! Good in one respect: easier to revive, although there might be some memory loss from oxygen deprivation, and he'd have to use a nerve-shunt. The sight of that bloated, blue-tinged face with the protruding tongue lingered unpleasantly.
He slipped himself a calmer; just one, although the gods alone knew what it would do with all the caffeine he'd been absorbing. He had to get on with this accursed viral project even if he was a doctor, not a gene-sculptor! It disturbed him to deliberately make a virus more harmfuclass="underline" too much like making medicine into a weapon. Chaundra had grown up on a planet where personal violence was fairly common, and done his internship in a trauma ward. His own family came from a pacifist tradition, and the internship had confirmed him in it.
At least Seld is out of this, he thought with relief.
The first message was yet another requisition for calmers. He signed it out; the organosynth machines were going to be running overtime. Would pirates take notice of supernatural calm? The doctor smiled ruefully at that and told the machine to show him the next message. It was flagged personal, which was odd. He began to read.
His heart stumbled; he could feel the pain in his chest quite distinctly, but it seemed distant and unimportant. Vision grayed down to a tunnel; it was long minutes before he could speak.
At last he managed to croak "Simeon? Simeon!"
"What is it, Chaundra?"
I don't like the way he looks. The sound of the doctor's voice had been sufficiently worrisome for Simeon to activate visuals. The doctor was visibly tired but, considering the work load he was pushing, fatigue would be normal. Nor unusual for Chaundra who tended to push himself. If Simeon had been capable of experiencing fatigue, he would be knackered right now. The slightly built dark man was gray-faced with sweat beading his forehead. Simeon ran a diagnostic program; not good. Extreme stress, to the point of endangering the man's health. Chaundra was not young anymore, and had endured some very hostile environments in his career. Not to mention the current problem.
"This message…" and Chaundra managed to point to his screen.
Dear Dad-Simeon read.
"Why on earth didn't this trip my watchman programs-I'll have Joat's hide for this, by God!"
- I couldn't go, I'm sorry. I hope you can understand and forgive me, but if anything were to happen to you and I wasn't there, I'd never forgive myself. I have to be here, because Mom can't be. I love you.
Seld.
"Oh!" Simeon paused in full comprehension of Chaundra's state of mind. "But didn't you put him on…"
"No," Chaundra said, in a voice drained of affect. "He was in line, almost to the lock. Then I received a bleep message-the most urgent of codes. Seld said I must answer. He understood that. We embraced, said good-bye and I left him there."
Chaundra flopped one hand over weakly, unable for more effort than that. "He was practically on the ship. How the hell did this happen?"
"I'm sorry. I've too good an idea!" Simeon told him. "I'll try to find out where that wicked young rascal is right now." He didn't mean Seld, but did not qualify his term. After a moment's pause he came up blank. "I'm not finding him, so he's well hidden wherever he is. That should be some consolation, Chaundra," he said in a firmly reassuring tone. "If I can't find him, neither can our expected visitors. I'll keep looking. Count on me for that!
Looking with every eye I own, Simeon said grimly. How could the well-mannered, well-brought up Seld have fallen for one of Joat's schemes? And what part would the kid play in it? And I'm to blame for this situation and Chaundra's heartache. Joat had been so eager to learn, and he'd seen no reason to restrict her terminal's access to the schematics. She had been bad enough before this emergency sent her to cover; now, he didn't know what she was capable of doing.
I've an idiot-savant running feral in my station, he thought bitterly. Ten years' precocity in advanced engineering techniques and the morals of a five-year-old. The selfishness of small children can be charming, when they don't have the power to do much harm. In a near-adult, and a brilliant near-adult at that, the possibilities went out of bounds.
"Well, Seld is here-somewhere!" Chaundra said, recovering himself enough to shout and to be livid with rage. "The clock says this message was entered ten hours after his ship left!"
"I know, I see it. Don't worry, Chaundra. We'll find him."
"I know we'll find him. What worries me is that he should hide! That he is no longer as safe as I thought he would be by now. Do you understand? My son could die. My heart is pounding with the anxiety."
Simeon ran another quick scan of the station, this time including apartments left empty by the evacuation.
"Still searching. There are so many places he could hide and even I couldn't find him," he said by way of reassuring Chaundra. "He's a big strong kid who can handle himself." As well as any of us, he thought. The odds for anyone on the station were not good, but there was no point in reminding Chaundra of that now.
"No," the doctor said between clenched teeth, "he isn't a 'big strong kid,' and he can't handle himself. He's never going to be strong. The plague that took his mother left him with nerve damage."
"Nerve damage?" Simeon said incredulously. Regeneration of nerve tissue was an old technology, and well understood. Without it, shellpeople would be impossible, for the same technique knitted their nervous systems into the machinery that supported them and that they commanded.
Chaundra shook his head. "I have done what I could to bypass the damage, but if he puts too much strain where the repair exists…" His voice trailed off, and when he raised his face to Simeon's visual node, he had turned into an old man.
"It was a little clinic, you understand. Mary, she was the meditech, I the doctor. A new continent on a new colony world. Much to do, we were on research grants. Then people began to die. There was nothing I could do… They imposed quarantine-quarantine, in this day and age! When I found what had happened, already it was too late for Mary. The virus… was a hybrid. A native virus-analogue combined with a mutant Terran encephalitis strain. The native virus wrapped around the Terran, you understand. So the immune system could not recognize it and had no defense. The Terran element enabled it to parasitize our DNA.