In Heaven and Earth (9 page)

“
And so she
became a hero,” Chanthavy said. “You had no enhancements, I
assume?”

“
No. It was
arrogance, nothing more. I thought I could do as much with my own
hands as less talented men could with enhancements. Not many Fleet
doctors could claim as much, not after years at the front line, but
me, I was proud to be pure.” He grimaced. “Being a smug little
bigot saved my life. Of course, it also brought me to Ahrima’s
attention.”

He had still been
standing when Ahrima strode into his sickbay, shaking so hard he
could no longer hold his tools, blood stained and speechless. She
had looked at him, and it had been like another blow, the ferocity
and astonishment in her unbandaged eye. Then she had smiled at him,
sharp and impressed, and said, “Stand down, Doctor. You can rest
now. The cavalry’s here.”

He had just blinked at
her, not understanding.

She had walked over to
him, taken his elbow, and guided him to a seat. “What’s your name,
Doctor?”

“
Reuben.” Then,
out of some dim instinct for military discipline, he had dragged
out, “Lieutenant Cooper, sir, ROMC.”

“
Consider
yourself promoted, captain. Where’s your CO?”

Reuben lifted his arm
towards the morgue. “Visual implant melted. Brain
aneurysm.”

“
Is there a
senior doctor here?”

Reuben had looked around,
watching dimly as new personnel started filing in, taking over the
care of his patients. The only members of his original team still
here were Kitty Okafor, who had been a year behind him at med
school, standing in the middle of the ward with tears running down
her face as she turned to the next patient, three corpsmen, and the
robonurses. There was no one else. “I think,” he said, “Doctor
Chukwu is in the next ward.”

“
Is he still
standing?”

“
Only amputated
his arm.” The world went a little hazy at that thought, and when he
came back round, he was on one of his own beds, with a strange
doctor standing over him. He tried to get up, only to be pushed
down firmly.

“
You’re off
duty, Dr Cooper,” the stranger said and smiled at him. “Stand down,
kid. You did good.”

“
Casualties?”

“
Too many,” the
doctor said grimly, “but you saved a lot of lives. The commander
wants to talk to you when you’ve rested. She’s
impressed.”

“
She ended the
war,” he said now. “
Ended
it. Not just a temporary truce or a lessening of
hostilities. She
ended
it.”

“
Brutally,”
Meili said.

“
By then, no
one cared. Too many people had died. Most people were just so damn
grateful to have a chance of peace. When she ran for president…
well, it was an easy victory.”

“
Even though
she ran on a pure human platform?”

“
It wasn’t what
defined her, not then. Law and order, security,
peace
. She promised free implant
removal as one of her health policies, but it was a popular pledge.
After the war…”

He stopped himself,
sickened. It was still too easy to defend her, to remember the
general he would have followed into hell, the president he had
idolised. “I trusted her,” he said instead. “She helped me. Because
of her patronage, I was at the top of my field, with opportunities
no one else my age had. All she asked was that I support her
publicly, tell people that they could survive without
implants.”

“
I saw the news
clips,” Chanthavy said. “You were eloquent.”

“
I believed
it,” he said. “I never had her religious convictions, but I had
seen what could go wrong. I do still think we are over-reliant on
mechanical enhancement. I would hate to see another Hyperion
Proxy.”

“
Is that why
you performed those operations?” Meili demanded. “Because you
believed they would be better off without their eyes or their limbs
or—”

“
I was given
consent forms,” he snapped. “For every operation I performed, I was
shown written consent.” He took a deep breath. “I should have
insisted that I speak to every patient first, but there were so
many of them, and the president said they wanted discretion, and
the whole system was clamouring for a return to… I was wrong. I was
stupid. I should have asked.”

“
How did you
find out?” Eskil asked.

“
Ahrima took me
on a visit to a convalescent hospital. It was a media event, all
scripted, but my cousin was ill, so I slipped away from my minders
to contact her. While I was there, I stumbled into a side ward, saw
a man I recognised from my table, and went to ask after his
recovery.”

“
And he told
you the truth?” Meili breathed.

“
He had no idea
who I was. He was blind. I had taken his eyes. I didn’t know who he
was, what it meant until he started to curse the bastard who had
crippled him.”

“
Who was
he?”

“
His name was
Jonah Imasuen. He was one of the leaders of the opposition party.
The media had been told he had left Rigel.”

They knew the rest, the
horrible truth that had come out over the next few months, Ahrima’s
prisons and asylums, the way her opponents had been treated, the
forced operations and silenced critics. “I investigated. Found out
what was happening. Went to Alpha Centauri and begged them to
listen. Testified. And here I am. Can we change the fucking subject
now?” He didn’t want to talk about betrayal any more, not Ahrima’s
of him or his of her.

“
Sure,” Meili
said. “Shitty time, shitty situation, shitty leader. Damned if I
know what I would have done in your place.”

“
Of course you
do,” Reuben said bitterly. “Everyone knows better than I
did.”

“
Easy to say if
you’re not living it,” Eskil said, and Meili nodded
shortly.

“
So, what now?”
she asked, staring at him. “You’re the tough one. Are we just going
to sit and wait to die? Can’t we fight?”

“
Fight what?”
Eskil said. “We have no weapons, not to use against them. We’re not
soldiers, Meili, not even Cooper here.”

“
I’d rather
fight,” Reuben said and rubbed his forehead. “Is there any way we
can isolate the nanites within the city?”

“
It should be
possible to put up barriers between districts,” Meili said. “That’s
what you’d do in a contagion, to minimise the spread.”

“
If this was a
viral outbreak, how would you approach it?” She was the expert on
contagious disease.

“
Stop any
movement out of infected areas,” she said grimly, “which is what
they’re doing with us, and then get inoculated medical teams in
there to treat the sick. Develop a vaccine.”

“
Don’t think
there is one for this.”

“
We’re the
medical team on the ground,” Chanthavy said. “We have no patients,
though.”

“
Safe disposal
of bodies is a priority in a bad epidemic,” Meili said. “We could
look at that. Perhaps it would work better to think of it as a
forest fire. We need to create fire breaks, deprive it of
fuel.”

“
We need to
break the city apart,” Eskil said, “and destroy the infected
parts.”

“
That’s exactly
what Vairya has set in motion,” Reuben pointed out, “and exactly
what the Fleet will do when they arrive.”

They all went quiet. Then
Meili looked up, her face fierce. “I don’t care. I don’t care if it
won’t make much difference. I want to go down fighting. This thing,
these nanites, they’re worse than a disease. I want to destroy as
many of them as I can before they get me.”

“
Yes,” Reuben
said and reached out to offer her his hand. “No waiting to
die.”

She grasped his hand,
squeezing tightly, and Eskil reached out tentatively to press his
fingers over theirs. “Me too. I’ll fight.”

Chanthavy was more
hesitant, but she reached out at last. “I’m not sure what we can
do, but we must try something.”

Reuben nodded. “We need
detailed information about the city if we’re going to start
building fire breaks.”

From the doorway, Vairya
said quietly, “I think I can help with that.”

Chapter Seven

THEY all turned to stare
at him, and he offered them a hesitant smile. “The sedatives wore
off. If I can’t be in my garden, let me keep you
company.”

“
Come in,”
Reuben said and moved up to make space for him.

Vairya came and sat down
beside him, a little tentatively. He was wearing his filmy chiton
again, and was barefoot, and looked utterly out of place in their
grotty mess. As soon as he settled into the neighbouring chair,
Reuben was aware of him, warm and solid and real beside him,
suddenly present in the real world in a way that was both bizarre
and made the hairs stand up on Reuben’s arms.

“
Captain,”
Reuben said, remembering some basic courtesies, “this is Vairya of
Caelestia. Vairya, Captain Chanthavy Som, Lieutenant Meili Peake
and Lieutenant Eskil Levin, crew of the
Juniper
.”

“
I am
honoured,” Chanthavy said.

“
The honour is
mine,” Vairya said gravely and glanced up at Reuben. “Any chance of
a drink?”

“
No,” everyone
around the table said at once.

“
You have a
head injury,” Meili reminded him. “No alcohol.”

“
My brain is
made up of entirely different elements from yours,” he pointed out,
pouting a little.

“
Does alcohol
make you giddy, absent-minded, uncoordinated, or overemotional?”
Reuben asked.

“
On a good
day,” Vairya muttered.

“
Then you don’t
get to drink with a head injury, whatever your brain is made
of.”

Vairya sighed.
“Food?”

“
That we can
do,” Eskil said and bounced to his feet. “Is there anything you
don’t eat? I can make something fresh if you like.”

“
Don’t go to
any trouble, please.”

“
Eskil’s never
met a TC4 before,” Reuben said. “He’s expecting you to have wings
and a halo.”

“
Coop!”

“
No,” Vairya
said, and he grinned a little. “Nothing like that. I’m just a
gardener. You want my brother Jibrail if that’s what you’re after.
He makes everyone feel unworthy.”

“
For now,”
Chanthavy said, “I would like to give my crew time to record
messages for their families. We welcome your help and mean no
rudeness, but perhaps we could leave you to your meal?”

“
I’ll keep him
company,” Reuben said. “No one will expect a message from
me.”

“
I’d appreciate
that,” Vairya said before any of the others could comment. “Perhaps
you could lend me a change of clothes. This isn’t particularly
warm.”

“
Sure,” Reuben
said and watched him eat. Vairya looked so out of place here, in
such an ordinary place, and he couldn’t make sense of it enough to
look away. Some people belonged in imaginary kingdoms, not mundane
kitchens.

It still felt strange
when he walked with Vairya to his cabin. Inside Vairya’s garden, it
had been easy to talk, to play games with words and wit. Here, it
was all a little too real.

“
Have you
turned shy on me, good Sir Reuben?” Vairya said. He had fallen into
step with Reuben easily, but there was something less graceful
about him out here. Glancing across, Reuben could see the red
patches where his skin hadn’t quite healed from the cold. His hair
was a little tangled, his cheek a little rougher, and it made him
more strange rather than less.

“
That’s not who
I am,” he said. “I’m not a knight, or anything like it. I’m just a
man.”

“
Yes,” Vairya
said. “I rather liked the fierce knight who invaded my garden, but
I think I prefer your real face. You look kinder than your imagined
self.”

Reuben stopped dead.
“Kind? I’m not—”

“
I think you
might be,” Vairya said and reached out to tug at his arm. “Kind
enough not to make me walk around in this for much
longer.”

“
Why are you
wearing that?” Reuben grumbled, not pulling his arm
free.

“
We were
rehearsing,” Vairya said, and all his sadness was back. “Once a
year, we put on a play in the city gardens, and we were
midrehearsal when the ship arrived.”

“
You
act?”

“
Why not? I
have no trouble remembering the lines.”

“
I suppose
not,” Reuben said. “Are you any good?”

Vairya laughed, and it
wasn’t as light as his laugh in the garden, but there was a
different warmth in it. “Modesty forbids.”

Reuben snorted at that,
and opened a hatch. “Down here.”

It felt strange having
someone else in his space, and he had to remind himself that he had
trespassed inside Vairya’s mind first. He had no right to feel
self-conscious about his plain sheets and undecorated walls. He had
never felt the need to fill his space with meaningless clutter. All
he needed was something to read on and access to the ship’s
library.