Post by Lorpius Prime on Apr 4, 2012 21:45:19 GMT -5
Exceptional talent, hard worker, otherwise curiously unremarkable.
That had been the leading comment entered by an instructor into Colleen Muyskens' student file at Earth Fleet Academy. Colleen had known about it since she spent half of a semester break during her third year forging credentials to gain access to the Academy's administration network.
She'd been proud of that comment. Often as not, Colleen felt embarrassed by her talents, even though she cherished them. She just did not like to stand out. That proved easier than it might have at the Academy. Despite her top grades overall, her performance in the combat simulators was only ever above average, and the simulators were where the true student celebrities were forged. Her only poor marks in her entire Academy career had been in command and leadership training. That was all right, Colleen didn't want the responsibility of commanding a ship or a station.
In her final year, Colleen had effectively co-written a white paper with one of the engineering instructors that led to a redesign of the magnetic compressors in Earth Fleet's newest model thrusters. The new designs were even being incorporated into the Moscow cruisers. Colleen had declined to let her name appear on the white paper. She liked helping, but she just didn't want that sort of attention.
The Academy had still made her give a speech when she graduated valedictorian of the class. Colleen had paid her roommate to write it.
Obscurity was just fine with Colleen. She had so many better things to do with her mind than worry about appearances or reputation. There were so many problems to solve, so many things that she could accomplish with just the right application of intelligence and determination.
So she'd thought. So she'd always told herself, both during her daydreams and when she was spending a third sleepless night trying to memorize every last detail of a subject before an exam or trying to make a paper just perfect before it was due. When she punished herself for making a mistake it was only because she knew that she could have done better. She could do anything.
Except stop an alien infestation from eating her mind. Except to resist giving into a pain so excruciating that it threatened to override all of Colleen's awareness. The pain was everywhere and unending, nothing she or her doctors had done reduced it in the slightest. She'd barely been aware when they finally shoved a tube into her trachea to keep her breathing, barely noticed the choking blood and fluid which made the tube necessary.
At the same time, a part of Colleen was screaming. She didn't know why, she didn't know how to stop. The screams were inside her head, but somehow separate from the rest of her thoughts, like they were drawn from some portion of her consciousness that was no longer a part of the rest. Colleen wanted to worry that her mind was coming apart under the pressure, but the pain was too great to even consider the fear for more than a few seconds at a time before it overwhelmed her again.
Xi Feng followed the Tadpole doctors into the operating room. She would have said she did it out of a commander's solemn duty to stand by her subordinates, but she could not shake the feeling that it might really have just been done for the sake of a morbid curiosity.
Lieutenant Junior Grade Muyskens was truly an awful sight, now. Her limbs were strapped to hold her to a narrow bed, and a pair of nurses were also holding her by the upper arms to try to keep her from injuring herself too badly as she writhed. A plastic tube stretched from a machine down into her throat, held partly open by some sort of clamp, to allow her to breathe. Vile liquids continued to leak out the corner of her mouth.
Worst was the Lieutenant's back. Almost all the skin around her shoulders and neck had now sloughed off, with oozing blood and flecks of rot showing around the edges. The missing flesh revealed what had been growing beneath. It looked like nothing so much as a dark, furry moss which roiled and agitated in angry, irregular patterns like long grass whipped by a storm. There was only a very light breeze at the room's edge from the Discovery's ventilation, so the stuff had to be moving under its own power.
Then the three Tadpoles in front of Xi Feng stopped short in their approach to the room's center, and she had to quickly arrest her momentum to avoid slamming into one of the aliens' backs.
At which point the Commodore realized where she had previously seen the stuff afflicting her flag lieutenant. Her jaw fell open.
Still strapped to the bed, Colleen Muyskens abruptly ceased choking and struggling. Then she turned her bulging eyes towards the Tadpoles.
Xi Feng barely had time to think this ignorance is going to get us all killed before the three aliens began speaking to one another. Even in the unfamiliar, burbling language, Xi Feng could tell that their words were rushed and excited.
Then Lieutenant Muyskens began crying and spasming again, and the Tadpoles fell silent. Just in front of them, the Fleet doctor had also stopped in his tracks and was turning his head between his patient and the aliens, looking just as bewildered as Xi Feng.
"What…?" he started to ask.
"Excuse me," the Tadpole Xi Feng thought was Dr. Onadunwe said in a clipped tone. And then she swung around the Human physician towards Muyskens.
"Hey!" the doctor snapped. He started after the Tadpole, but Xi Feng caught him by an arm.
"Stand down, Commander," she told him. "I think there's more going on here than we realized."
He sneered and opened his mouth to protest, but Xi Feng nodded towards his patient. Onadunwe was leaning in over Muyskens, with one hand on the Lieutenant's shoulder. The pair of nurses were looming tensed, but then backed off after a gesture from their Commodore.
Colleen, for her part, seemed to be calming down again. Her chest was still heaving rapidly, in a struggle to breathe despite the tube. But she was no longer tearing at her restraints, and her eyes were clear and focused on the alien bent over above her.
The Tadpole rubbed at Muyskens' shoulder and warbled something indistinct. It seemed to soothe the Lieutenant further.
Meanwhile, everyone else in the room, Human and Tadpole, stood almost frozen as they watched. The scene continued that way for several minutes, while Onadunwe cooed at Muyskens, until the Lieutenant finally stopped fighting the breathing tube and lay still.
Then the Tadpole doctor straightened up. She remained standing by the bed, but turned around. When she spoke, she was addressing one of the other aliens, but in English.
"The Human has acquired an Enharg," it said.
"I will not do that, Commodore," Onadunwe growled. "We will not do that. Not under any circumstances. Not for anything."
Commodore Lee's voice was far colder, but no less fierce. "I am not negotiating the welfare of Lieutenant Muyskens, or any other member of my crew," she said. "The Tadpoles assured the safety of your Human guests when you invited us aboard your ship. After failing to live up to that assurance, we were promised absolute cooperation in the effort to remedy the Lieutenant's condition. You have since acknowledged that a remedy is within your capacity, and so I demand that you meet the promise given. You will cure the infection."
Onadunwe stretched one hand out towards the Commodore and deliberately curled the fingers into a giant fist. The she brought it down onto the plastic cafeteria table like a jackhammer. The table actually warped and bent where the Tadpole struck, while her fist suffered no apparent injury, as if it had been made of solid granite.
"Ignorance cannot indefinitely excuse your suggestions, Human. Your comrade has my sympathy for her suffering. But you propose murder as a solution, and my people will not tolerate it."
Pascual thought he had seen Onadunwe angry when she was playing Go against Hyong back on the Barn Swallow. He had been sorely mistaken. Even with the expressive gulf between species, the Tadpole's fury was palpable. The fluff around her head—her Enharg, Pascual now understood—was inflated to more than twice its normal volume and twitched madly. Pascual had to resist the urge to turn his head and glance at the marines Commodore Lee had called into the room to watch the Tadpoles. He imagined them keeping their hands nervously ready by their weapons.
He knew that he should be taking the lead on the Human side of this conversation. But Pascual doubted his own ability to push his species' interest without reservation just at the moment. He'd only just come to a more complete understanding of the nature of the Tadpoles' biological existence a couple days ago, and found himself rather sympathetic to their perspective. Pascual knew that he was too nice by half, when right now the situation called for uncompromising determination. And whatever her other faults, Commodore Lee was not the type to give in to sentiment.
So Pascual sat, silent and slightly deflated. He was not the only one. Both Ambassador Rokden and Dr. Vurk were at the same table. And to Pascual's judgment, the two other Tadpoles looked as profoundly unhappy as he felt, while they let Onadunwe speak for them.
"I propose nothing, Doctor," Commodore Lee replied, with no sign that she was intimidated by the Tadpole's actions or statements. "If you have an alternative means of removing the infection from Lieutenant Muyskens, then by all means, pursue them. But if there is only the one option, then that is what you will do. I will not permit your ethics to jeopardize the safety of my crew."
Onadunwe's head began to quiver again. Some sort of diplomatic instinct told Pascual that he had to intervene now, lest an actual fistfight—or worse—erupt.
"Enough!" he shouted. And then—perhaps only because now he had to say something—he had an idea.
"Doctor," he said, and glanced between Onadunwe and Vurk, "when we first met you told me that you had reincar—uh, lived some 'past lives'. Now, I'm still trying to figure out all the implications of your biology. But that does sound to me like you have a way to, ah, remove the "Enharg" of one individual in order to transplant it. Am I correct?"
For just a second or two, Pascual could feel the hopes of every Human in the room—a small cafeteria near the clinic where Colleen Muyskens had been placed—expand. But then Dr. Vurk shook his bulbous head.
"We do," Onadunwe explained from beside her mate. "But the procedure is fatal for the Maklig, the host body," she thumped her own chest with one hand. Then she turned her head back towards Commodore Lee. "And I have no more desire to kill your subordinate than I do her new Enharg."
Pascual felt a bit of bile rise up his throat. He couldn't think of another quick reply to head off the inevitable explosion from Commodore Lee, and so he was sure that the fight he had just avoided was about to resume. But somehow the Commodore managed to keep both her cool and her silence this time, though Pascual could see that her eyes were smoldering.
Instead, it was Rokden that spoke next. The Tadpole Ambassador stood up from his stool. "Onadunwe," he said.
The physician turned around and looked silently at him for a moment, then cocked her head to one side. "Rokden," she replied.
"You will euthanize the Human Muyskens' Enharg."
The Tadpoles' language was still too unfamiliar for Pascual to even pick up on the broad inflections of a conversation. In this particular instance, however, he had no trouble gathering the fact that both Vurk and Onadunwe were angry—very angry—when they began gurgling harshly back at Rokden in their native speech.
Rokden allowed them to continue for a few moments, then held up one broad hand. This did not actually silence either of his companions, but they did drop their voices just a little.
"The Humans' indifference to our suffering is distressing," he said in English. Onadunwe and Vurk both finally stopped talking. "But it is still understandable. And," he paused a moment, a sigh? "It does not matter. It was our fault, and this individual does not deserve to suffer for our mistake."
Onadunwe responded with another low stream of words in her language. Pascual had often compared the Tadpoles' speech to running water in his head. Using that metaphor, Onadunwe's speech now was more the crashing jet of a fire hose than a peaceful river.
Once again, Rokden's own reply was in English.
"I require it of you," he said.
Onadunwe spewed another angry stream of words. Then she made a sharp, slicing gesture with one hand, turned away from the table, and began stomping towards the exit.
Now Vurk came to his feet as well. "Onadunwe!" he shouted. But his mate showed no sign of stopping.
There was a Petty Officer standing guard by the door, but he seemed at a loss for what to do about the big alien storming straight towards him. Pascual and Commodore Lee were both still sitting at the table trying to come to grips with what was happening.
Onadunwe circled around Rokden, still murmuring darkly, and was almost out the door when the Tadpole Ambassador spoke again. And this time, he raised his voice loud enough to echo off the plastic walls.
"One million, nine hundred thirty-two thousand, and forty-eight that I have personally condemned, Onadunwe! I remember each of the names. I know the entire list, but I also remember which ones were on my order."
Onadunwe stopped just in front of the door. The Petty Officer beside it made a brave show by not flinching at her bulk. Rokden continued speaking to her quivering back.
"You know the elders, Onadunwe. Every one of them has given those orders, too, and every one of them will agree with me if you go to them. One million, nine hundred thirty-two thousand, forty-eight deaths, Onadunwe. You can answer for one."
He finished, and Onadunwe did not move or speak for a while. She just stood there, back to the room while the black fibers of her own Enharg seethed in sympathy with her emotions. Then she barked a single, flat word, reached a hand out to the door, and nearly wrenched it off its hinges when she tore it open. Then she was through it and gone.
Vurk wavered in his place, but Rokden nodded in apparent satisfaction. The Ambassador turned back towards the Humans at the table.
"She will perform the procedure, Commodore. I apologize for any anxiety our discussion may have caused."
That had been the leading comment entered by an instructor into Colleen Muyskens' student file at Earth Fleet Academy. Colleen had known about it since she spent half of a semester break during her third year forging credentials to gain access to the Academy's administration network.
She'd been proud of that comment. Often as not, Colleen felt embarrassed by her talents, even though she cherished them. She just did not like to stand out. That proved easier than it might have at the Academy. Despite her top grades overall, her performance in the combat simulators was only ever above average, and the simulators were where the true student celebrities were forged. Her only poor marks in her entire Academy career had been in command and leadership training. That was all right, Colleen didn't want the responsibility of commanding a ship or a station.
In her final year, Colleen had effectively co-written a white paper with one of the engineering instructors that led to a redesign of the magnetic compressors in Earth Fleet's newest model thrusters. The new designs were even being incorporated into the Moscow cruisers. Colleen had declined to let her name appear on the white paper. She liked helping, but she just didn't want that sort of attention.
The Academy had still made her give a speech when she graduated valedictorian of the class. Colleen had paid her roommate to write it.
Obscurity was just fine with Colleen. She had so many better things to do with her mind than worry about appearances or reputation. There were so many problems to solve, so many things that she could accomplish with just the right application of intelligence and determination.
So she'd thought. So she'd always told herself, both during her daydreams and when she was spending a third sleepless night trying to memorize every last detail of a subject before an exam or trying to make a paper just perfect before it was due. When she punished herself for making a mistake it was only because she knew that she could have done better. She could do anything.
Except stop an alien infestation from eating her mind. Except to resist giving into a pain so excruciating that it threatened to override all of Colleen's awareness. The pain was everywhere and unending, nothing she or her doctors had done reduced it in the slightest. She'd barely been aware when they finally shoved a tube into her trachea to keep her breathing, barely noticed the choking blood and fluid which made the tube necessary.
At the same time, a part of Colleen was screaming. She didn't know why, she didn't know how to stop. The screams were inside her head, but somehow separate from the rest of her thoughts, like they were drawn from some portion of her consciousness that was no longer a part of the rest. Colleen wanted to worry that her mind was coming apart under the pressure, but the pain was too great to even consider the fear for more than a few seconds at a time before it overwhelmed her again.
* * *
Xi Feng followed the Tadpole doctors into the operating room. She would have said she did it out of a commander's solemn duty to stand by her subordinates, but she could not shake the feeling that it might really have just been done for the sake of a morbid curiosity.
Lieutenant Junior Grade Muyskens was truly an awful sight, now. Her limbs were strapped to hold her to a narrow bed, and a pair of nurses were also holding her by the upper arms to try to keep her from injuring herself too badly as she writhed. A plastic tube stretched from a machine down into her throat, held partly open by some sort of clamp, to allow her to breathe. Vile liquids continued to leak out the corner of her mouth.
Worst was the Lieutenant's back. Almost all the skin around her shoulders and neck had now sloughed off, with oozing blood and flecks of rot showing around the edges. The missing flesh revealed what had been growing beneath. It looked like nothing so much as a dark, furry moss which roiled and agitated in angry, irregular patterns like long grass whipped by a storm. There was only a very light breeze at the room's edge from the Discovery's ventilation, so the stuff had to be moving under its own power.
Then the three Tadpoles in front of Xi Feng stopped short in their approach to the room's center, and she had to quickly arrest her momentum to avoid slamming into one of the aliens' backs.
At which point the Commodore realized where she had previously seen the stuff afflicting her flag lieutenant. Her jaw fell open.
Still strapped to the bed, Colleen Muyskens abruptly ceased choking and struggling. Then she turned her bulging eyes towards the Tadpoles.
Xi Feng barely had time to think this ignorance is going to get us all killed before the three aliens began speaking to one another. Even in the unfamiliar, burbling language, Xi Feng could tell that their words were rushed and excited.
Then Lieutenant Muyskens began crying and spasming again, and the Tadpoles fell silent. Just in front of them, the Fleet doctor had also stopped in his tracks and was turning his head between his patient and the aliens, looking just as bewildered as Xi Feng.
"What…?" he started to ask.
"Excuse me," the Tadpole Xi Feng thought was Dr. Onadunwe said in a clipped tone. And then she swung around the Human physician towards Muyskens.
"Hey!" the doctor snapped. He started after the Tadpole, but Xi Feng caught him by an arm.
"Stand down, Commander," she told him. "I think there's more going on here than we realized."
He sneered and opened his mouth to protest, but Xi Feng nodded towards his patient. Onadunwe was leaning in over Muyskens, with one hand on the Lieutenant's shoulder. The pair of nurses were looming tensed, but then backed off after a gesture from their Commodore.
Colleen, for her part, seemed to be calming down again. Her chest was still heaving rapidly, in a struggle to breathe despite the tube. But she was no longer tearing at her restraints, and her eyes were clear and focused on the alien bent over above her.
The Tadpole rubbed at Muyskens' shoulder and warbled something indistinct. It seemed to soothe the Lieutenant further.
Meanwhile, everyone else in the room, Human and Tadpole, stood almost frozen as they watched. The scene continued that way for several minutes, while Onadunwe cooed at Muyskens, until the Lieutenant finally stopped fighting the breathing tube and lay still.
Then the Tadpole doctor straightened up. She remained standing by the bed, but turned around. When she spoke, she was addressing one of the other aliens, but in English.
"The Human has acquired an Enharg," it said.
* * *
"I will not do that, Commodore," Onadunwe growled. "We will not do that. Not under any circumstances. Not for anything."
Commodore Lee's voice was far colder, but no less fierce. "I am not negotiating the welfare of Lieutenant Muyskens, or any other member of my crew," she said. "The Tadpoles assured the safety of your Human guests when you invited us aboard your ship. After failing to live up to that assurance, we were promised absolute cooperation in the effort to remedy the Lieutenant's condition. You have since acknowledged that a remedy is within your capacity, and so I demand that you meet the promise given. You will cure the infection."
Onadunwe stretched one hand out towards the Commodore and deliberately curled the fingers into a giant fist. The she brought it down onto the plastic cafeteria table like a jackhammer. The table actually warped and bent where the Tadpole struck, while her fist suffered no apparent injury, as if it had been made of solid granite.
"Ignorance cannot indefinitely excuse your suggestions, Human. Your comrade has my sympathy for her suffering. But you propose murder as a solution, and my people will not tolerate it."
Pascual thought he had seen Onadunwe angry when she was playing Go against Hyong back on the Barn Swallow. He had been sorely mistaken. Even with the expressive gulf between species, the Tadpole's fury was palpable. The fluff around her head—her Enharg, Pascual now understood—was inflated to more than twice its normal volume and twitched madly. Pascual had to resist the urge to turn his head and glance at the marines Commodore Lee had called into the room to watch the Tadpoles. He imagined them keeping their hands nervously ready by their weapons.
He knew that he should be taking the lead on the Human side of this conversation. But Pascual doubted his own ability to push his species' interest without reservation just at the moment. He'd only just come to a more complete understanding of the nature of the Tadpoles' biological existence a couple days ago, and found himself rather sympathetic to their perspective. Pascual knew that he was too nice by half, when right now the situation called for uncompromising determination. And whatever her other faults, Commodore Lee was not the type to give in to sentiment.
So Pascual sat, silent and slightly deflated. He was not the only one. Both Ambassador Rokden and Dr. Vurk were at the same table. And to Pascual's judgment, the two other Tadpoles looked as profoundly unhappy as he felt, while they let Onadunwe speak for them.
"I propose nothing, Doctor," Commodore Lee replied, with no sign that she was intimidated by the Tadpole's actions or statements. "If you have an alternative means of removing the infection from Lieutenant Muyskens, then by all means, pursue them. But if there is only the one option, then that is what you will do. I will not permit your ethics to jeopardize the safety of my crew."
Onadunwe's head began to quiver again. Some sort of diplomatic instinct told Pascual that he had to intervene now, lest an actual fistfight—or worse—erupt.
"Enough!" he shouted. And then—perhaps only because now he had to say something—he had an idea.
"Doctor," he said, and glanced between Onadunwe and Vurk, "when we first met you told me that you had reincar—uh, lived some 'past lives'. Now, I'm still trying to figure out all the implications of your biology. But that does sound to me like you have a way to, ah, remove the "Enharg" of one individual in order to transplant it. Am I correct?"
For just a second or two, Pascual could feel the hopes of every Human in the room—a small cafeteria near the clinic where Colleen Muyskens had been placed—expand. But then Dr. Vurk shook his bulbous head.
"We do," Onadunwe explained from beside her mate. "But the procedure is fatal for the Maklig, the host body," she thumped her own chest with one hand. Then she turned her head back towards Commodore Lee. "And I have no more desire to kill your subordinate than I do her new Enharg."
Pascual felt a bit of bile rise up his throat. He couldn't think of another quick reply to head off the inevitable explosion from Commodore Lee, and so he was sure that the fight he had just avoided was about to resume. But somehow the Commodore managed to keep both her cool and her silence this time, though Pascual could see that her eyes were smoldering.
Instead, it was Rokden that spoke next. The Tadpole Ambassador stood up from his stool. "Onadunwe," he said.
The physician turned around and looked silently at him for a moment, then cocked her head to one side. "Rokden," she replied.
"You will euthanize the Human Muyskens' Enharg."
The Tadpoles' language was still too unfamiliar for Pascual to even pick up on the broad inflections of a conversation. In this particular instance, however, he had no trouble gathering the fact that both Vurk and Onadunwe were angry—very angry—when they began gurgling harshly back at Rokden in their native speech.
Rokden allowed them to continue for a few moments, then held up one broad hand. This did not actually silence either of his companions, but they did drop their voices just a little.
"The Humans' indifference to our suffering is distressing," he said in English. Onadunwe and Vurk both finally stopped talking. "But it is still understandable. And," he paused a moment, a sigh? "It does not matter. It was our fault, and this individual does not deserve to suffer for our mistake."
Onadunwe responded with another low stream of words in her language. Pascual had often compared the Tadpoles' speech to running water in his head. Using that metaphor, Onadunwe's speech now was more the crashing jet of a fire hose than a peaceful river.
Once again, Rokden's own reply was in English.
"I require it of you," he said.
Onadunwe spewed another angry stream of words. Then she made a sharp, slicing gesture with one hand, turned away from the table, and began stomping towards the exit.
Now Vurk came to his feet as well. "Onadunwe!" he shouted. But his mate showed no sign of stopping.
There was a Petty Officer standing guard by the door, but he seemed at a loss for what to do about the big alien storming straight towards him. Pascual and Commodore Lee were both still sitting at the table trying to come to grips with what was happening.
Onadunwe circled around Rokden, still murmuring darkly, and was almost out the door when the Tadpole Ambassador spoke again. And this time, he raised his voice loud enough to echo off the plastic walls.
"One million, nine hundred thirty-two thousand, and forty-eight that I have personally condemned, Onadunwe! I remember each of the names. I know the entire list, but I also remember which ones were on my order."
Onadunwe stopped just in front of the door. The Petty Officer beside it made a brave show by not flinching at her bulk. Rokden continued speaking to her quivering back.
"You know the elders, Onadunwe. Every one of them has given those orders, too, and every one of them will agree with me if you go to them. One million, nine hundred thirty-two thousand, forty-eight deaths, Onadunwe. You can answer for one."
He finished, and Onadunwe did not move or speak for a while. She just stood there, back to the room while the black fibers of her own Enharg seethed in sympathy with her emotions. Then she barked a single, flat word, reached a hand out to the door, and nearly wrenched it off its hinges when she tore it open. Then she was through it and gone.
Vurk wavered in his place, but Rokden nodded in apparent satisfaction. The Ambassador turned back towards the Humans at the table.
"She will perform the procedure, Commodore. I apologize for any anxiety our discussion may have caused."