Beginnings

BEAUTY AND

THE BEAST


David Weber

“Lieutenant Harrington?”

Alfred Harrington turned. After the better part of two T-years, it no longer felt strange not to be addressed as “Gunny,” but it didn't feel completely natural to be addressed as “Lieutenant,” either. No doubt that would change. Everything changed, after all.

“Yes?” he said, raising one eyebrow as he looked at the man who'd addressed him.

He was a shrimpy little fellow. No more than a hundred and fifty-six centimeters—fifty-eight, at the outside—compared to Alfred's own two meters. Like a lot of Beowulf's population, he had the almond-shaped eyes of Old Earth's Asia, dark hair, and a complexion which reminded Alfred of Sphinxian sandal oak. And, on second impression, shrimpy or not there was something about him that suggested he might be just about as tough as sandal oak. It wasn't really anything a man could put his finger on. Just something about the way he stood, or about the well-defined musculature, perhaps. Or about the eyes. Yes, it was the eyes, Alfred realized. He'd seen eyes like that before. They might have been differently shaped, or a different color, but he'd seen them.

“I'm Jacques Benton-Ramirez y Chou,” the little fellow said.

“Gesundheit,” Alfred said, before he could stop himself, then shook his head. “Sorry. I don't suppose a Navy officer ought to admit it, but I'm not at my best after a flight, I'm afraid. Besides,” he smiled crookedly, “I doubt I'm the first one to make that particular bad joke.”

“Here on Beowulf?” Benton-Ramirez y Chou cocked his head, looking up at Alfred's towering centimeters with the speculative eye of a logger considering a crown oak. “Actually, you probably are.” He looked up at Alfred for another moment, then smiled. It was a slow smile, but just as crooked as Alfred's, and Alfred felt something inside warming as amusement gleamed in those eyes. “Off Beowulf, now, I think I may have heard it a time or two.”

“Well,” Alfred extended his right hand, reminding himself to mind his Sphinxian muscles and not absentmindedly crush the other's metacarpals, “I'll try to behave myself in the future, Mister Benton-Ramirez y Chou.”

“Don't try too hard,” Benton-Ramirez y Chou replied dryly, gripping the proffered hand with surprising strength. “I wouldn't want you sprain any synapses.”

Alfred's smile grew broader and he shook his head.

“I'll try to go easy on my poor, overworked mental processes,” he assured the Beowulfer. “Of course, the air's thin enough here that I'm probably suffering from oxygen deprivation.”

“Or altitude sickness,” Benton-Ramirez y Chou offered affably, looking up at him.

“Possibly,” Alfred agreed with a chuckle. “Possibly.”

The smaller man grinned and released his hand, and Alfred felt that inner warmth grow stronger. It had been a while—much too long a while—since he'd felt something like that, and he stepped on it quickly, reflexively.

“Should I assume you were specifically looking for me and didn't just happen to read my nameplate and decide to strike up a conversation?” he asked.

“Guilty,” Benton-Ramirez y Chou replied. “I was asked to meet you and see you squared away on campus.”

“Oh?” Both of Alfred's eyebrows rose. “Nobody told me I rated an escort!”

“Well, consider it a military courtesy. It's not really ‘Mister Benton-Ramirez y Chou;' it's ‘Captain Benton-Ramirez y Chou.' Biological Survey Corps.”

Alfred felt his shoulders square themselves automatically, despite the fact that the other man was in civilian dress, as he realized what he'd seen the first time he looked at the Beowulfer. The BSC, despite its civilian-sounding name, was one of the best special operations forces in the Solarian League. It was also quite small. There were rumors that not all of its operations accorded perfectly with official Solarian League policy, but it didn't seem to care very much about that. And it didn't hand out captain's insignia in cereal boxes, either.

“Pleased to meet you, Sir,” he said more formally, and Benton-Ramirez y Chou shook his head.

“I'm a very new captain, you're due to make lieutenant (senior grade) in about five months, and that's the Osterman Cross ribbon on your chest, Lieutenant.” There was very little humor in his voice now. “I don't think we need any ‘sirs.'”

Alfred's lips tightened. A spike of anger flickered through him, made even brighter and sharper by the sincerity of the Beowulfer's tone. But that anger was irrational, and he knew it, so he made himself nod, instead.

“My family's got better connections than most with the medical establishment here on Beowulf,” Benton-Ramirez y Chou continued. If he'd noticed anything about Alfred's expression, it didn't show. “Of course, here on Beowulf, just about everybody's got at least some connection with BioSciences, but—I know you'll find this hard to believe, Lieutenant Harrington, but I swear it's true—there are actually people, real live Beowulfers, who don't have any association with medicine at all. We try to keep them locked in cellars deep enough none of you outworlders will discover their shameful secret, though.”

“I see.” Alfred felt the lips which had tightened twitch in amusement. Then something clicked in his brain. Benton-Ramirez y Chou, was it? And “better connections” with the medical establishment? Well, he supposed that was one way to describe one of the two or three families which had been at the pinnacle of Beowulf bioscience for a mere nine hundred T-years or so. Just what in hell had sent a member of that family into the military? Or, for that matter, gotten him assigned to play nursemaid for an ex-enlisted Manticoran medical student?

“Your planet's shameful secret is safe with me, Captain,” he said out loud.

“Thank you,” Benton-Ramirez y Chou said with an air of great earnestness. “However, that connection and the fact that I've strayed from the normal family business into a rather different field of endeavor led certain people to conclude that I'd make a suitable escort to get you cleared through Customs and delivered to campus without your getting lost along the way.”

“I see,” Alfred said again, although he was oddly certain that Benton-Ramirez y Chou's explanation, while accurate, had not been complete. He didn't know why he was so positive of that, but he was accustomed to relying on his hunches, his ability to “read” people. After all, it had kept him alive on more than one occasion.

A fresh billow of darkness tried to blow through him, but he stepped on it firmly. It was easier than it had been. Possibly with enough practice he wouldn't even realize when he did it, and would that be a good thing or a bad one?

“Well, since I would truly hate to get lost in the urban jungles of downtown Grendel,” he said, “I accept your offer of a local guide with gratitude, Captain. Let me grab my bags.”

* * *

Much later that same day, Alfred sat on the small balcony attached to his apartment, looking out across the campus of Ignaz Semmelweis University of Beowulf at the massive pastel towers of the city of Grendel. The mellow, slanting rays of a setting sun gilded them in bronze and gold and shadow. Despite his joke about getting lost in urban jungles, Grendel really was an impressive sight for a boy who'd grown up in the Sphinxian bush. Landing, back on Manticore, was just as impressive in its own way, but Grendel was at least twice Landing's size, and far older. They were still areas in the heart of Grendel where historical buildings from the planet's colony days reared no more than forty or fifty stories from the ground, carefully maintained as historical relics. They deserved it after the better part of two thousand T-years, and they also reminded anyone who visited them that Beowulf was the oldest extra-solar star system to have been settled.

It was far warmer here than it would have been back on Sphinx, although not so warm as Manticore itself. He would have preferred something a little cooler, but he couldn't really complain. He'd grown up on a planet whose gravity was twenty-three percent greater than Beowulf's, so he felt light enough on his feet. And the air smelled good, seasoned with the greenery and flowering shrubs of ISU's beautifully landscaped grounds. He didn't like the birds, though. The Terrestrial imports weren't bad, and the local analogues were pleasing enough to the eye, but some of them had a peculiar, warbling whistle that reminded him of the stone ravens on Clematis. He didn't need that.

He sipped beer from the stein in his hand. Back home, he preferred his beer at room temperature, but room temperature on Sphinx was substantially lower than room temperature here on Beowulf. He'd gotten into the habit of drinking it chilled at OCS on Manticore, and this was clearly no place to start breaking such useful habits. And at least the beer was good. Not as good as Sphinxian beer, of course, but he'd already checked; Old Tilman was available as an import as soon as he got around to reprogramming the apartment kitchen. On the other hand, the wine list looked interesting, too. He was picky about his wines. His buddies in the Corps had ribbed him about that often enough, but he'd given as good as he got, and there were at least at least two dozen vintages on the list that he'd never even heard of. He looked forward to sampling them all; in the meantime, beer would do just fine.

He swallowed appreciatively while his mind ran back over the long day's activities.

Ignaz Semmelweis University's Beowulf campus was probably the most prestigious medical school in the explored galaxy. Competition for admission was always fierce, and Alfred suspected that at least some of his fellow students were going to resent his presence.

Beowulf was home to one of the Manticoran Wormhole Junction's secondary termini. The Solarian League in general wasn't especially fond of Manticore and its steadily expanding merchant marine, but the relationship between Beowulf and the Star Kingdom had been very close for centuries. There was a lot of intermarriage between Beowulf and Manticore, for that matter, and relations between the Beowulf System Defense Force and the Star Kingdom's military were cordial and based on mutual respect. The Star Empire had worked closely with the Biological Survey Corps on many occasions, as well, although that particular relationship was a bit more . . . fraught, given the nature of some of the BSC's operations. All of which helped to explain why the Royal Manticoran Navy was allocated a certain quota of students for ISU each year. Not everyone approved of that arrangement, and as surely as the sun would rise in the morning, someone was going to decide Alfred was here only because of that quota. Certainly an overgrown lummox from Sphinx who hadn't even bothered to complete his undergraduate degree before running off to join the Marines hadn't been able to make it on his merits as a student!

Actually, though, he could have. It might have been tight, given the University's scholastic standards, but he'd carried a perfect 4.0 GPA through the undergraduate studies and two years of premed the Navy had paid for, and he knew he'd aced the aptitude tests and ISU's written admission requirements. He hadn't done as well on the oral admissions interview, though. He'd known at the time that he wasn't earning top marks from two of the Beowulfers. That “hunch” ability of his had told him they weren't entirely satisfied with his explanation of why he wanted to specialize in neurosurgery. It wasn't that they'd disbelieved him, or that anything he'd said had been . . . objectionable. It was just that they hadn't thought he was being completely open with them.

Because he hadn't been.

His grip on the stein tightened, and he felt his brown eyes going bleak and hard as he looked out across the beautiful campus at the sun-washed towers of Grendel. He saw something else entirely in that moment. He saw Clematis. He saw the fires rolling through the city of Hope. He heard the explosions and the screams. He saw again what neural disruptors could do, and suddenly the beer tasted foul in his mouth and his stomach muscles tightened with remembered nausea. And with that terrible, burning rage. That sense of exalted purpose. The poisonous, soul-killing joy.

He closed his eyes and set the stein gently on the table at his elbow. He felt the remembered emotions guttering out through his nerves, felt his pulse settling back towards normal, and drew a deep, deep breath. He held it in his lungs, forcing himself towards stillness once more. And then, when the demons had retreated, he opened his eyes once again.

That was a bad one, he thought. Probably because I'm tired. But that's okay. It's getting better. And I can't really complain too much. At least I got out alive, didn't I?

His mouth quirked humorlessly and he inhaled again. He was probably bullshitting himself by blaming it on fatigue, but he really was tired. And maybe the universe really would look better again in the morning.

He pushed himself up out of the chair, gave Grendel one more look, then headed for bed.

* * *

“So, Lieutenant Harrington, I take it you're settled in?”

“Yes, Sir. Thank you, Sir.”

“Good.”

Captain Howard Young, the Manticoran military attaché, was some sort of distant connection to the North Hollows, according to Alfred's briefing before he'd left for Grendel. He didn't look especially happy to see a towering Sphinxian ex-Marine on his com display, but at least he wasn't holding his nose the way some of the more aristocratically advantaged members of the Navy's officer corps seemed wont to do.

“Good,” Young repeated. His right hand toyed with an antique paperweight on his desk, and he seemed to be feeling for the exact words he wanted. That struck Alfred as being just a little odd, since Young had screened him for the official purpose of welcoming him to Beowulf. Of course, he couldn't think of any reason for a captain of the list to worry about “welcoming” a mere lieutenant who'd been assigned to Beowulf to attend school, either, so he simply waited patiently. Patience was something he'd learned early, hunting on Sphinx, although he'd required a different variety of it since leaving Sphinx.

“Ah, something was called to my attention yesterday, Lieutenant,” Young said finally. “A security matter.” His eyes narrowed suddenly, looking out at the display in to Alfred's.

“Yes, Sir.” Alfred's voice was flatter than it had been, and his jaw muscles tightened. The intelligence pukes back home had cautioned him repeatedly about the need to keep his mouth shut. In fact, they'd reminded him so often he'd felt an almost overwhelming urge to pinch a few heads like zits. He understood, he wasn't an idiot, and he'd given his word, so why the hell couldn't they just shut up and leave him alone?

His hands clenched into fists outside the field of view of the com's pickup, and he felt his jaw muscles tense.

You're overreacting . . . again, he told himself harshly. Young's probably just dotting all the “i”s and crossing all the “t”s. Or maybe he's protecting his own posterior—couldn't have the out-of-control jar head shooting his mouth off on his watch, now could he?

“I was thoroughly advised about that matter before leaving the Star Kingdom, Sir,” he said levelly.

“Oh, good.” Young seemed to relax, then he shook his head. “Sorry, Lieutenant. I didn't mean to harp on it. Unfortunately, my Admiralty counterpart didn't get all the little boxes checked in his dispatch to me. He told me I wasn't supposed to bring it up, but he hadn't specifically indicated that he'd told you about that. Under the circumstances, I thought I'd better check and save us both some grief if he hadn't gotten around to that.”

“I understand, Sir.” Alfred felt himself relaxing in turn and drew a deep breath. “It's not something I'd be likely to talk about a lot, anyway, though.”

Young started to speak, then stopped, shook his head, and visibly changed what he'd been about to say.

“Well, I hope you understand that the embassy will be happy to see to anything we can do for you while you're on Beowulf. I don't think we have any other officers over there on campus at the moment, do we?”

“Not to the best of my knowledge, Sir. No.”

“I didn't think so.” Young smiled much more naturally. “I've been left adrift among civilians a time or two myself, Lieutenant. If you get the feeling that you need to talk to another uniform while you're here—just to retain your sanity, you understand—drop by. We've even got a couple of Marines on the staff, and we play a pretty mean game of poker.”

“Thank you, Sir.” Alfred smiled back. “I'll bear that in mind. I'm not completely without military contacts here on Beowulf, either, though.”

“You're not?” Young raised an eyebrow.

“No, Sir. And to be honest, that little matter you've just reminded me about makes me wonder how much of a coincidence that really was.”

“Why?”

“Because I had a greeter at the landing pad. A fellow named Benton-Ramirez y Chou. He said he was a captain in the BSC.”

“Jacques Benton-Ramirez y Chou?” Young's eyes had narrowed again.

“Yes, Sir.” Alfred shrugged ever so slightly. As a mere junior-grade lieutenant and a medical officer with no access to sensitive information (aside from Clematis, a corner of his mind said coldly), he wasn't required to file the “contact reports” whenever he encountered a foreign national, thank God. That didn't mean it wasn't a good idea to go ahead and mention it when it happened, though. It came under the heading of dotting more of those “i”s and crossing more of those “t”s, he supposed. “He said it was a courtesy to help me get settled here at the University. And he mentioned his ‘connection' to the Beowulfan medical community.”

“Well, that's true enough!” Young's expression was thoughtful. “It's probably a good thing you mentioned it, Lieutenant, but I doubt there was anything . . . official behind it. Benton-Ramirez y Chou is a naturally inquisitive sort, and he's got a reputation as something of a social gadfly. He may have picked up a few rumors, but it's unlikely anybody on Beowulf would be actively digging. On the other hand, his family is not only prominent but quite active in Abolitionist circles, so don't take that for granted where he's concerned. If he ‘happens' to run into you again, let us know about it, right?”

“Yes, Sir. I will.”

“Good man.” Young smiled again. “And now, since I know you're due for orientation today, I'll let you go. Good luck, Lieutenant.”

* * *

“Watch where you're going!”

The voice was sharp, irritated, and carried a very familiar accent. Alfred turned toward the impact, looking for whoever had just run into him, and found himself looking at a fair-haired, slightly built young man, a good quarter meter shorter than him, who was probably about his own age, assuming they were both first-generation prolong. The other man was expensively and ultra-stylishly dressed. He also had an exquisitely coiffed civilian haircut, blue eyes, and an angry expression.

“I beg your pardon?” Alfred said. “Were you speaking to me?”

He deliberately emphasized his Sphinxian accent, although he knew he probably shouldn't be squirting any extra hydrogen into this particular fire. He couldn't help himself though. The stranger's upper-class, private-school, aristocratic Manticoran accent, coupled with that irritated expression, simply rubbed him the wrong way.

“There are other people in the hall, you know!” the stranger snapped.

“Why, I believe you're right!” Alfred marveled, looking around the crowded precincts of Benton Hall carefully before returning his attention to the other man. “Amazing. The place is so big I hadn't noticed. Thanks for pointing it out.”

The stranger seemed to swell with outrage. Alfred could see him almost literally quivering in anger, and he didn't really need any “hunches” to read the fury rolling off of the fellow in waves.

“Some of the people in this hall deserve to be here,” the other man said in a cutting, icy tone.

“Well I'm sure they won't mind your being here, too,” Alfred replied. “By the way, why are you here?”

“Listen, you—!”

Alfred raised his eyebrows and shifted his balance. It was a small thing, but deliberate, and the other man chopped himself off in midsentence as the tall, powerfully built Sphinxian leaned over him ever so slightly.

He glared up at Alfred for another moment or two, then made a disgusted sound, turned on his heel and stamped away. Alfred watched him go, wondering what his problem had been.

Obviously, his problem was you, Alfred, he told himself sardonically. And you didn't go out of your way to make it any better, did you? That's you all over again, isn't it?

He drew a deep breath, forcing himself to center, remembering a time—it seemed long, long ago—when he would simply have let the little pipsqueak's ire bounce off. He'd like to be that way again, but it wasn't going to happen. So he'd just have to learn to deal with it.

He turned back to the queue wending its way steadily forward and reminded himself to work on that.

* * *

“Sorry about that, Allison,” Franz Illescu said as he slid into the empty chair. He tried to make it come out ruefully, already regretting the anger he'd allowed himself to show. Not that the overgrown moron hadn't deserved it. But it had still been childish of him, and beneath his dignity, when it came down to it.

“What was that all about?” the beautiful young woman sitting across the table from him asked. “I was too far away to hear anything, but it didn't look as if the two of you were exactly bosom buddies!”

“Not hardly!” Iliescu snorted and spared one glance back over his shoulder at the towering figure in Royal Manticoran Navy uniform. The idiot had to flaunt it right here on campus, didn't he? “To be honest, it's the first time I've actually met him. And I didn't enjoy the experience any more than I'd expected to, either.”

“Really?” She tilted her head, considering him thoughtfully. “Personally, I've found that expectations have a way of turning into self-fulfilling prophecies sometimes.”

Illescu's face tightened for just a moment, but then he gave himself a shake and inhaled a deep, calming breath.

“You may have a point,” he acknowledged. His companion looked absurdly young for a graduate student, even in a prolong society, but that was probably because she'd received the second-generation therapies. They could be administered at a much earlier starting point, and he reminded himself that the person behind that youthful façade was within a T-year or two of his own age. “I have to admit I did let my . . . preconceptions, let's say, color my initial reaction. In this case, though, I think I can honestly say the two of us would never have cared very much for each other under any circumstances.”

“Maybe not.” She sipped delicately from her steaming cup of tea, then grimaced. The Benton Hall canteen didn't make the very best tea on Beowulf. She rather wished she hadn't agreed to meet Illescu here . . . and not just because of the quality of the beverage service. But since she had, she might as well make conversation before she could find a way to slip diplomatically away.

“Why did you have such low expectations to begin with?” she asked.

“Because he's a moron,” Iliescu said. “Look at him! Wearing that uniform at Registration! Doesn't he realize this is a civilian school? Just seeing him in it makes me feel embarrassed as a Manticoran.”

“You have something against uniforms?”

“No, not in their place,” he replied. “But this isn't the proper place for it. Oh, I realize somebody has to join the Navy or the Marines, and it's not as if there were anything shameful about it, I suppose. But ISU is supposed to be for people who are serious about helping other people—about healing other people—not for people who sign up to kill them in job lots! And I've heard stories about this guy. Ugly stories.”

“What kind of ‘ugly stories'?” Something dangerous glinted in her dark brown eyes, but Illescu seemed unaware of it.

“Not the kind that make good dinner conversation,” he said. “Nobody back home wanted to talk about it very much, which suggests a lot to me. Whatever it was, they hushed it up pretty quickly, but apparently he got a lot of people killed in the process of whatever it was. The Crown can't be too happy about whatever he did, anyway. Sure, the Queen pinned the medal on him, but the ceremony was all very hush-hush and family-only, and the citation's sealed. Obviously somebody didn't want the newsies getting hold of it!”

“Really?” She looked back across the enormous room as the lieutenant in the black and gold uniform disappeared through a door on its other side.

“Really. And then he used the medal to get himself admitted to ISU,” Iliescu growled. He took a quick, angry sip from his own teacup. “He took advantage of the Navy's quota, that's how he got here. I hate that entire system. If you can't cut it on your own, then you shouldn't be here. And you sure as hell shouldn't be bouncing better students—people who're going to be doctors, not part of the business of killing other people—just because of a uniform with a piece of ribbon on the front. It's a damned entitlement system, just because they served in the damned military. Anybody could do that, and it's not like they didn't already have a benefits package better than any mere civilian's. Or that they didn't volunteer for the job in the first place, for that matter! No one made them do it, so why should that give them an edge over other people just because those other people don't want to butcher other human beings?”

His companion made a noncommittal sound, wondering if Illescu had been denied admission personally the first time he'd applied or if someone else had failed to gain it. At least she understood now why he'd started so thoroughly on the wrong foot with the enormous lieutenant.

Well, I suppose it's possible he really did use the quota system to get in, she reflected, but anyone who can make Franz that mad that quickly can't possibly be all bad!

* * *

“So, tell me, Lieutenant Harrington. What makes you want to specialize in neurosurgery?”

Dr. Penelope Mwo-chi leaned back in her chair behind her desk, considering Alfred across it. This interview was one hell of a lot more important than most, and Ignaz Semmelweis University had some quaint and interesting customs, including personal face-to-face interviews and meetings between students and their teachers. It didn't seem very efficient compared to electronic meetings, but Alfred wasn't going to argue with the system which had turned out the galaxy's premier doctors for rather longer than the Star Kingdom had existed. Besides, those “hunches” of his didn't work through an electronic interface, and it was evident to him that Dr. Mwo-chi's question was rather more serious and pointed than her tone might have suggested.

“I think it's a challenging field,” he said, after a moment, “and I like challenges. But I also think it's an important field, maybe even more important than ever now that prolong's becoming generally available. My primary interest isn't really in geriatrics or prophylactic care, but people are going to be living even longer, and we really don't know what a couple of centuries of additional life are going to do to neural pathways and synapses. Everything may work just as fine as the prolong therapists think it will, but it may not, too. I'm less sanguine than some people are about synthetic substitutes if it doesn't, although I do think it's a promising area to consider. For myself, though, I'm more interested in repair and reconstruction, especially after trauma, and I'm convinced we can improve prostheses to work better and interface more smoothly with the organic nervous system.”

“I see.” Mwo-chi tipped her chair a bit farther back, steepling her fingers under her chin. Despite her surname, she had blond hair and blue eyes, and now those eyes studied Alfred's expression very carefully. “That's a very satisfactory answer, Lieutenant. Why don't I think it's a complete answer?”

Alfred stiffened slightly in his own chair, looking back at her. There was something deep and important—to her, at least—behind that question. He could tell that much, but not why it was important. He considered prevaricating, but he didn't want to. He didn't want to give her her “complete answer,” either, but that was more because he didn't want to go there, not because there was anything shameful about it. Except that he did feel ashamed, not to mention guilty. Yet Mwo-chi was the real reason he'd wanted to attend ISU in the first place. There might be one neurosurgeon in the galaxy who was better qualified than she was, but he knew damned well there weren't two of them. And the results of this interview would determine whether or not she accepted him as one of her personal students.

“I've . . . seen the consequences of combat wounds, Doctor,” he said finally. “Some of them happened to people I . . . cared about.” He made himself look directly into her eyes. “That's one reason I'm interested in reconstruction and improving prostheses, working on the organic-electronic interface.”

“But those aren't the only things you're interested in, are they, Lieutenant?” she asked gently.

“No,” he admitted. He closed his eyes for a moment, then looked back at her. “I've seen what neural disruptors do, too,” he said very, very quietly.

Mwo-chi's nostrils flared and the muscles in her cheeks seemed to tense. Then she shook her head.

“Lieutenant,” she said almost compassionately, “neural disruptors don't leave us anything to repair. That's why they call them ‘disruptors.' The damage is at the cellular level, and I'm sure you already know how little that leaves us to work with. That's why the classic treatment for damaged limbs for the last seventy T-years has been amputation and regeneration. And for those who can't regen—or where we can't amputate and regrow—the only option is nerve transplants, for those who can accept them, or complete artifical nerve networks. We've made a lot of progress with nerve nets, especially in the last hundred years or so, and what we can do now is one hell of a lot better than what we used to be able to accomplish, but they're still a long, long way from replacing the organic originals. There's loss of function, whatever we do, and serious loss of sensation, as well, and some people simply never learn to adapt to them, however hard they try. But replacement is the only therapy we've been able to come up with, and given the amount of brain damage disruptors often inflict, assuming they don't simply crash the entire autonomous nervous system, even that's effective—or as effective as it can be, at any rate—in no more than twenty or thirty percent of all cases.”

“I know the numbers, Doctor.”

Alfred's reply came out more harshly than he'd intended, but he'd been half afraid of that response. It was the main reason he hadn't been more forthcoming with the University interview board. What he wanted to accomplish was at best quixotic and at worst a colossal waste of time and effort. He'd been afraid the board would reject his application in favor of someone whose work might actually lead to positive, concrete results.

“I know the numbers,” he repeated in a voice that was closer to normal, “but I don't see any reason we ought to accept them as set in stone and unchangeable. Once upon a time, we didn't know how to vaccinate against cancer, either. Or how to create prolong. Or, if you go back far enough, how to prevent infection or childbed fever! Semmelweis ended up in an asylum, Doctor, because nobody believed what he was saying or that he could accomplish something so miraculous as preventing women from dying after childbirth just by washing his hands and his instruments. That didn't make him wrong, though.”

“I see you know some history,” Mwo-chi observed. She swung her chair gently from side to side, and the skin around her eyes crinkled in what might have been a smile. “But much as I admire the man this school's named for, you might also want to reflect upon the fact that Ignaz Semmelweis wasn't the least arrogant man ever to practice medicine. He didn't exactly endear himself to his colleagues by the way he went about presenting and implementing his conclusions. Or expressing his opinion of the colleagues in question, for that matter. He was right, and eventually the entire medical profession realized, but that didn't make him effective during his own lifetime. Not outside of the hospitals in which he himself worked, at any rate.”

“I don't want to change the universe, Doctor,” Alfred said. “I wouldn't object if that happened, you understand, but it's not what I want and not what I think is going to happen. I just want to be able to help. To undo some of the damage I've—” he changed his verb selection in midsentence “— seen. I'm not expecting any magic bullets, but it's something that's worth doing. Something worth trying.”

“And you're willing to risk wasting the next three T-years of your life by investing them in something that almost certainly isn't going to work in the end?”

“It's my life,” he replied. “Do I want to ‘waste' it? Of course not! But no one who graduates from ISU's College of Neurosurgery is going to be a waste of time, Dr. Mwo-chi. Maybe I won't be able to find a way to repair disruptor damage, just like everybody keeps telling me I won't. That doesn't mean I can't change a lot of lives for the better anyway.”

“But what you really want to do is learn how to repair the jellied, useless tissue disruptors leave behind, isn't it?” she challenged.

He looked into her eyes, seeing the city of Hope again behind his own, hearing the screams, seeing the bodies go down, smelling the smoke. Penelope Mwo-chi accepted very few applicants as her personal students, and even fewer as her assistants. The fact that he'd gotten this far said a lot, and might owe more to that piece of ribbon on his chest than he wanted to admit, but she wasn't going to waste one of those handful of slots on someone who honestly thought he might be able to find a way to repair that “jellied” tissue she'd just described. He knew that, yet he couldn't lie, and there was something behind the challenge she'd just issued. Something that wasn't cut and dried, that hadn't rejected his application . . . yet, at least. And so he met her gaze steadily across her desk and nodded.

“Yes, Doctor,” he said. “It is.”

She looked back at him for another moment, then let her chair come back upright, laid her hands flat on her desk, and nodded sharply.

“Good,” she said softly. “Very good, Lieutenant Harrington.” His surprise must have shown, because she smiled. It was a slow smile, but a warm one, and he found himself smiling back. “You're probably a lunatic, Lieutenant,” she told him, “but medicine needs lunatics. And it needs dreams . . . and the lunatics who won't give up on them. I've been doing a little research of my own over the past decade or so, as it happens, and some of it relates directly to disruptor damage. I don't have any magical fixes or any breakthrough results, but I have made some progress, and if that's what you're really interested in, I think I have a research assistantship with your name written all over it.”

* * *

“There seems to be more to your friend Lieutenant Harrington than meets the eye, Franz,” Allison said with more than a slight edge of gentle malice. The Manticoran looked at her, and she smiled. “Hadn't you heard? Dr. Mwo-chi's chosen him as one of her research assistants.”

Illescu's expression tightened. He started to shoot something back—something short and sharp, she suspected—then stopped himself. Instead, he inhaled deeply and then shrugged.

“Dr. Mwo-chi's entitled to choose anyone she wants,” he said. “You may be right—there may be more to him than I think. I'm certainly not going to accuse Dr. Mwo-chi of picking anyone as an assistant if she didn't think he was qualified! That doesn't change my opinion about quota systems, though. It doesn't mean he deserved to get here in the first place, and it doesn't mean he didn't bounce someone who did deserve it. As for myself,” he shrugged again, “I'm just as happy we're going to be an entirely different fields. ISU's big enough I won't have to run into him unless I'm just plain unlucky.”

“You're right about that,” she replied. “The university is big enough you can usually avoid people who tick you off. Oh, my! Look at the time! I'm going to be late to class if I don't hurry.”

She turned and walked away, wondering what it was she'd thought she'd seen in Franz Illescu when he first arrived on campus. He'd seemed personable enough then, and quite charming in his own way. He'd clearly fancied himself as a ladies' man, but he was prepared to take no for an answer with remarkably good grace when his interest wasn't reciprocated. And, in fairness, he was well informed, had good taste in music, and had proved a pleasant bed companion, as well.

Yet under all of those undeniable good points, there was a sharp-edged personality. The sort that tended to leave relationships bleeding in the end. It wasn't that he wasn't a very good student who, someday, was going to turn into a very good doctor . . . as a technician, at any rate. She didn't understand why he'd chosen obstetrics, given what she'd seen of him so far, but he was certainly smart enough if he could just get outside those preconceptions and that prickly personality of his.

She'd almost opted for maternal-fetal medicine herself, but she'd decided in the end that the focus was too narrow. A wonderful focus, yes, but more . . . limited than what she wanted to do with her life. Instead, she'd chosen gene therapy and surgery, despite the fact that it had been a family specialization for generations. She suspected sometimes that was why she'd been so inclined to choose against it, because she knew she had a naturally contrary streak. In fact, it was about a kilometer wide, and it had turned her into the closest thing to a rebel the family had experienced since her Great Aunt Jacqueline had dropped out of college, changed her name, and emigrated to Old Earth. She didn't really mean to be “difficult,” as her mother was wont to put it, but neither did she intend to just roll over and accept the dictates of tradition and other people's expectations. It was her life, when it came down to it. She had to be the one to decide what she did with it, whether the rest of Beowulf approved or not. And besides that, it was so boring, so limiting, to allow herself to be hammered into someone else's role just because that was what was expected of someone in her family. In fact, she'd almost followed her brother's example and avoided medicine entirely. Now that would have caused her parents to suffer a good old-fashioned fit of appoplexy!

In the end, she hadn't been able to do it, though. Maybe there really was something to her mother's insistence that it was “in the blood,” although that always seemed particularly unscientific from someone who was herself one of Beowulf's dozen leading geneticists. But when it came down to it, Allison simply hadn't been able to turn away. The wonders of the human body, and especially of the marvelous, unending complexity and splendor of its genetic blueprint, had been too much. The lure of giving her life to their study had overcome her frustration at being shoved into a predictable niche. It struck her as especially unfair that she should find the human genome so fascinating that she couldn't resist giving in to her mother's endless gentle (and not so gentle) pushing and prodding. But that interest of hers in maternal and fetal might be part of what had initially attracted her to Iliescu. She was going to spend a lot of time working with expectant parents, after all, and whatever she thought of him as a person, he was clearly going to be a superior obstetric technician. Surely they should have had something in common!

Whatever had drawn her originally, however, it was wearing off quickly, and she found herself wondering about the towering Manticoran naval lieutenant he'd taken in such profound dislike. Anyone he disliked was probably worth knowing more about, after all. And there was something about Harrington. He certainly stood out on campus, and not just because of the uniform he habitually wore. He was much, much taller than the vast majority of Beowulfers, whereas Allison was shorter than most of them. In fact, he was a good half-meter taller than she was! No one would ever call him handsome, either, although he was at least passably good-looking.

Perhaps it was the way he moved? Someone that large shouldn't move . . . gracefully, yet he did. Part of that might be the difference in gravities, yet that couldn't be all of it, and she found herself wondering about his genetic profile. The Star Kingdom of Manticore had acquired more than its share of genies, after all. All of its planets boasted gravities heavier than Beowulf's, but Sphinx's was heaviest of all, and Harrington didn't have the stocky, over-muscled build of an unmodified human growing up in a gravity field thirty-five percent heavier than the one in which humanity had evolved. So clearly there was some modification in his family history, and she wondered which one it had been? Not Quellhollow; he didn't have the coloration for that. Meyerdahl was a possibility, of course, but so were the Kismet and Cantrell modifications. Not that it mattered, except that it piqued her professional curiosity.

She thought about it as she sauntered towards the class whose immediacy she had somewhat mendaciously exaggerated to Illescu, then grinned. Her brother had teased her more than once over her curiosity. He had a passion for ancient literature, especially pre-space, Old Earth writers. One of his favorite authors was a fellow named Kipling, and he'd called her “Ricky” when she was a child. When she'd asked him why, she'd told him that he reminded her of two of his favorite Kipling characters, someone called “the Elephant Child” with his “'satiable curiosity” and someone else called “Rikki-Tikki-Tavi,” whose motto had been “Run and find out.” She hadn't known whether to be amused or insulted, so he'd given her copies of the original stories, and she'd decided in the end that he had a point. A very good point, as it happened.

* * *

David Weber's books