03 - Sagittarius is Bleeding (8 page)

“Five thousand, two hundred and fifty one, last I checked.”

“And virtually all of our number remain intact,” said Freya. “There were five
hundred of us before, and the five hundred remain.”

Zarek was dumbfounded at that. “All the practitioners of your… your faith
… made it onto a ship?”

“Yes. Our fleet ship, the
Bifrost,
had been prepared for just this
eventuality. Because the Edda warned us, and it warned of exactly what did
occur. It’s all part of our writings, just as accurate—if not more so—than any
predictions Pythia may have presented. Imagine if the religious establishment,
and the government, had been willing to give us our due. Far more might well
have survived. My point is that five hundred is a much higher percentage of
twenty five hundred than it is of millions. As such, our presence as part of the Sagittaron colony—to which our ship is
registered—is much more significant than it was. Based on the percentage of our
population, we deserve a seat on the Quorum of Twelve, and a say in what happens
to us. We want our voice to be heard.”

“And what is that voice intending to say, if I might ask?” inquired Zarek.

“That we alone know the truth of what is supposed to happen to humanity. We
will be happy to share this knowledge with all others, so they will no longer be
surprised by what happens to them. That way they will no longer be wandering in
the dark, as we did for so long. We will share the benefit of the wisdom given
us by our ancients, who were inspired—not by any mere mortal such as Pythia—but
insights provided by the Lord Woten himself. After all, our people were saved.
If our teachings are embraced, who knows? The remainder of humanity might be as
well.”

“And if the Quorum doesn’t see fit to give you a place in it?”

“Well, then,” Wolf Gunnerson said with a shrug, “it is best for all not to
consider such things.”

Tom Zarek definitely did not like the sound of that.

Number Six had Baltar’s back up against the wall. Literally.

The vice president of the Colonies and the foremost living expert on Cylons
had come to the conclusion that he had the most complicated love life in…
well, in the history of love lives.

Ever since the obliteration of much of humanity on Caprica… ever since he
had come to
Galactica
as a refugee… he’d had Cylons on the brain. More
accurately, one Cylon: a mental representation of the gorgeous blonde who had
bewitched him and caused him to betray—however inadvertently—the whole of
humanity. Day after day she stood before him, or draped herself around him, or
yanked him around like a lap dog, looking every bit as real as she had back in
Caprica. She had rejoiced in her control of him, and in the fact that she was so
near and yet so far.

Then had come the day when her hold on him had slipped ever so slightly. It
was the day that he had been brought over to the newly arrived
Pegasus
and discovered his dream girl in the flesh. Her name was Gina and she was a
prisoner aboard that other Battlestar. Nearly comatose, desiring nothing but to
die, Baltar had brought her back from that dark precipice while the blonde Cylon
called Number Six glowered from the back of his mind. She had become her own
worst enemy. Her power over Baltar was that she represented that which he could
never truly have again, and thus he would follow her about like a lovesick puppy
in perpetual frustration. A physical incarnation of her, if she and Baltar came
together, would take that power away.

At least that was how Baltar had seen it. And he had made the mistake of
saying it to Six’s face.

He had been working in his lab when she had shown up with her typical litany
of smirking, superior comments, like a prison warden who knew that her subject
could never escape. But Baltar’s thoughts were filled with Gina, who had escaped
her imprisonment and had joined a group of rebels lobbying for making peace with
the Cylons (not that any of the rebels knew her true nature). So when Number Six
disturbed his concentration while he was running an experiment, he was
disinclined to allow her mock advances to pass without rebuttal.

“Is it my imagination,” Baltar had asked her, sitting on a lab stool and
turning to face her, “or do you seem a tad more desperate than you used to? It
seems to me that you’re… oh, what’s the best way to put it… that you’re
trying too hard. Yes, that’s it. As if you’re worried that your influence over
me may be waning.” Her face was frozen, which was even more encouraging to him,
and he stepped toward her with a contemptuous grin on his face. “And who knows?
Perhaps you’re right. Perhaps, with the reality of Gina in the picture, the mere
image of you can only stand by and smolder.” He spoke the last words with an
almost fiendish delight. He had adored this mental link to his past life with
obsessive fervor, but he had also been aware that she had used him, abused him,
both in his previous life and now. It was the purest example of a love/hate relationship there was, and at
this moment the hate aspect was in ascendance.

Number Six stared at him for a long moment. Inwardly he felt his nerve
shriveling before her, but he fought to keep a look of smug triumph. Suddenly
she stepped forward, shoved him back against the wall and kissed him
passionately. She seemed to be radiating heat. He tried to push her away, but
she brought her knee up into his crotch—not quickly and painfully, but instead
slow, kneading it gently. He gasped into her mouth, and her tongue darted
quickly in and out. He felt his pulse racing. It felt as if there were too much
blood in his body, and he had to think that if he dropped dead from a heart
attack right then, they’d never be able to figure out what the hell had
happened.

“You’re thinking about her, aren’t you,” she said, taking a quick break from
kissing him to whisper in his ear. Her soft breaths caressing his ears sent
chills down his spine.

“No… no, I swear…”

“She can’t give you what I can…”

Her knee started to move up and down, and Baltar automatically began
responding, his body moving along with it. He was finding it hard to breathe,
hard to think of anything beyond what she was doing to him. His mind was
spinning away, completely out of control…

“Doctor Baltar?”

Baltar froze in place. Number Six was gone. Standing in the open doorway was
a Colonial marine, Corporal Venner. He was staring at Baltar, not sure what he
was seeing. “I, um… I was knocking, and you weren’t answering… are you
okay? You were moaning or something… I wasn’t sure if you were having some
kinda attack…”

“Fine. Fine, I’m… fine,” Baltar said, and quickly started moving his back up and down again. “Just… coping with an extremely nagging
itch. Ahhhhhh.” He let out his breath slowly as if an irritation were being
dealt with. “Yesssss, that’s… that’s doing the job.” Once he felt he’d
carried on the pathetic charade long enough, he stepped away from the wall and
clapped his hands together briskly. “Right. Feeling much better. How”—he cleared
his throat—“how can I be of service?”

“Well, Doctor…” Venner paused. “Or should I be calling you Mr. Vice
President?”

“I answer to either. I suppose here, in my lab, ‘Doctor’ is perfectly
serviceable. Certainly I’m more accustomed to it.”

“All right, then, Doctor.” And he pulled someone forward from behind him. It
was a young boy, and Baltar recognized him instantly.

“Boxey… isn’t it?” asked Baltar.

“Hey, Doc,” Boxey replied.

The marine looked from the boy to the scientist. “You know each other?”

Something about the situation made Baltar think that minimizing his
connection to the boy was preferable. “We were rescued from Caprica at the same
time,” Baltar answered him. “Shared a vessel. Is there a problem…?”

“Yeah, there’s a problem.” He clamped a firm hand on Boxey’s shoulder, as if
the boy posed a flight risk. “We need you to jump him to the front of the line
for that Cylon test of yours.”

“What?”
Baltar’s eyebrows almost bumped up against the top of his head.
“Breeding them a little young, wouldn’t you say?”

“Could be.”

“Corporal,” said Baltar, “this is preposterous. That boy is no more a Cylon
than I am.”

He heard a sharp, female laugh. His head snapped around.

There was no sign of Number Six, but he was certain he’d heard her voice.

“Doctor…?” Venner sounded curious, even a bit suspicious.

“Just a little nervous tic,” Baltar said quickly. “Happens sometimes when
Cylons are being discussed. Oops… there it goes again.” And he snapped his
head once more in response to nothing at all. “So… may I ask just what in the
world makes you think that a thirteen-year-old boy is a Cylon agent?”

“He snuck into the holding cell where the known Cylon agent is being held. He
was caught conferring with her.”

“The known Cylon agent? Sharon Valerii, you mean?”

“Yes, sir.”

Baltar tilted his head questioningly. “Isn’t she guarded?”

“He slipped past the guards while they were distracted during the recent
Cylon raid.”

Baltar made a
harrumph
sound deep in his throat. “A single boy eluded
the notice of armed guards, and you think the boy should be tested? If you ask
me, you might want to have the guards assessed if they allowed that to happen.”

Venner’s scowl darkened. “Doctor, if you’re not willing to—”

“Yes, yes, of course I’m willing. I think it’s a waste of everyone’s time,
but I’ll attend to it. Wait outside, please.”

“I’m not supposed to leave him unattended.”

“He’s not unattended, he’s with me. There’s only one door out of here and
you’ll be standing in front of it. Unless you think he can elude you as well.”

“No sir, but—”

“You say ‘but’ to an instruction issued you by the vice president of the
Colonies?”

There was a dare in Baltar’s tone, and Venner wisely didn’t challenge it. Automatically snapping to attention, Venner said briskly, “I’ll
be just on the other side of the door if you need anything, sir.”

“That’s very comforting.”

Venner exited the room. Baltar turned to Boxey, pointed at a stool, and said,
“Sit there.” Boxey did as he was told and watched as Baltar prepared a syringe
to draw blood. “So what were you doing speaking to the Cylon?” asked Baltar.

“She saved my life. Yours too,” Boxey replied. “I just wanted to see her.”

“Technically, she didn’t save your life. Another Sharon Valerii did that.”

“Yeah, I kind of have trouble understanding that part.”

“It’s very simple,” said Baltar, gesturing for Boxey to roll up his sleeve.
Boxey did so. “One model of Cylon dies, and her memories are transferred into
the next one, like a computer downloading information one to the next.” He
tapped Boxey’s exposed forearm, found a vein he liked, and proceeded to draw
blood from it. Boxey made a slight sound of pain at first, but then he decided
to remain stiff-lipped and did not cry out.

“But… when you’re talking about computers, you know that one’s different
from the other,” said Boxey. “Are the Sharons the same person?”

“For all intents and purposes, yes,” said Baltar as he drew the blood.

“Is that the same as a regular yes?”

Baltar was beginning to lose his patience. “Yes,” he said as he withdrew the
syringe from Boxey’s arm and set the vial of blood in a stand. “Why is this all
so important to you?”

“Because I don’t know why she saved us,” said Boxey. “If she’s evil, why did
she do something that helped us? That helped anybody?”

“It wasn’t time for her to act on her programming,” said Baltar. “There was a
certain point when it kicked in, and that was when she shot Admiral Adama.”

“And that’s what made her evil?”

“I’m not entirely certain that label applies, but for the sake of argument,
yes.”

“So what if she never had done that? Would she have been good?”

“I… suppose so, yes. She would have been ‘good’, to use your phrasing, but
with the potential for evildoing. Which, on further reflection,” he admitted,
“more or less describes just about anyone.”

“But not ‘just about anyone’ is that way. Just her.”

Letting his impatience rattle him, Baltar snapped, “Are you going somewhere
with this? I mean, let’s get to it, shall we? Is there some particularly cogent
observation that you want to make about the entire subject? Some dazzling
insight you wish to offer that you and only you have discerned?”

Boxey looked taken aback by the outburst. “I just…”

“You just
what?”

“I just didn’t think she looked evil, is all.”

Baltar was about to fire off a reply, but instead he sat there a moment with
his mouth open. Then he closed it and looked askance at the boy. “You didn’t
think she looked evil.”

“Yeah.” Boxey shrugged. “That’s all.”

“And what, pray, does evil look like?”

Boxey considered it a moment, and then said, “You.”

“Me?”

“Yeah. I’m not saying you are,” Boxey hurriedly added. “You’re probably
not…”

“Probably. Well, I like
that
!”

“It’s just that… well… you’re not a beautiful woman, first of all. It’s hard to think a beautiful woman like Sharon is evil…”

“Trust me: Some of the most evil people I’ve known are beautiful women,” said
Baltar. In his mind’s eye, he could envision Number Six taking a deep bow.

“And also, you’re…”

“I’m what?”

“You’re all twitchy.”

That drew an even more confused reaction from Baltar.
“Twitchy?”

“Jumpy. Your eyes keep moving from side to side. Even back when we left
Caprica, I first noticed it. You act like… like you’re afraid that someone’s
watching you, all the time. Like you’re up to something and you’re concerned
that you’re going to get caught at it. Someone who looks worried all the time
that he’s going to be caught at something… it makes it seem like you’re evil,
because only someone evil would have that much to be nervous about.”