Allison Chou breathed deeply and steadily, the soles of her running shoes crunching crisply on the gravel as she headed for the final bend in the trail before she headed back. She loved Rosalind Franklin Park, and especially its jogging trails. The park had been laid out the better part of two thousand T-years ago, and the great-great-grandchildren of the original Old Earth oaks which had been planted by the long dead landscapers were as much as two meters in diameter now, spreading their massive branches to cover the trails in deep, green shade. It was almost like running at the bottom of one of the parks' koi ponds, and the bursts of sunlight when she passed through a break in the foliage were as brilliant as they were dazzling. And on top of all of its other attractions, the Watson and Crick Boulevard entrance was less than two blocks from her off-campus apartment. It was her favorite place to run, and running was one of her favorite occupations when she had hard things to think about.
Face it, she told herself severely, you're going to have to deal with this. It's probably just a loose screw rattling around inside your skull. You always did have a vivid imagination, you know! God only knows what's caused you to fixate on this this way, but the only way you're ever going to put it to rest is to talk to him. Spend a little time actually with him instead of just sitting around wondering about him. You don't have to walk up to him with bedroom eyes, hit him over the head with a club and drag him off. You just need to . . . explore this, figure out what the hell is going on, and then either act on it or forget about it.
She shook her head and rolled her eyes. Sure. That was all she had to do. It made perfect sense—or as much sense as anything could make, under the circumstances. The only problems were that she'd never heard of circumstances like these, they weren't getting better, and they didn't scare her any less.
She stopped rolling her eyes and closed them briefly, then opened them again. It was still there. It was fainter, but she was certain she could still have raised her hand and pointed unerringly in Alfred Harrington's direction. And the fact that it was fainter actually worried her more, because Rosalind Franklin Park lay on the far side of her apartment from campus. Which meant—if she wasn't simply losing her mind and imagining the entire thing—that whatever it was she felt was distance-sensitive. The closer she got to campus, the stronger that sense of direction became, like a stray chunk of asteroid rock drifting into a planetary gravity well.
Oh, there's a marvelous simile! she told herself. Sums it up in a nutshell, doesn't it? Sure, that dark thing you feel scares you, but the real scare factor is that you may not be in charge of your own feelings anymore. It's like something is sucking you in, against your will, making you think about a total stranger this way. That's not just evidence you may be unhinged; it suggests some kind of . . . emotional dependency.
She reached the final bend in the trail and started back, trying not to grimace as that sense of someone else's presence changed bearing like some kind of homing beacon. Enough was enough, she decided. When she finished this morning's run, it was time to shower, change, head over to campus and invite Lieutenant Harrington to share a cup of tea with her. At least she'd have the chance to sit down across the table from him and find out whether or not she'd been imagining all of this.
And what do you do if it turns out you haven't been? she asked herself, but herself offered no answer to the question.
* * *
Alfred Harrington leaned back in the recliner on his apartment balcony, heels propped somewhat inelegantly on the balcony railing, a glass of Alessandra Farms 1819 on the table at his elbow. The gewürztraminer-style wine had been a pleasant surprise (for everything except his credit account) when he discovered it. It went well with the spicy Beowulfan smoked sausage and the wedge of sharp cheddar on the plate beside the glass, and Alessandra aged it in barrels of native Beowulfan red-spine oak, lightly charred on the inside to give it a pleasing smokiness to underscore the hint of peach and lychee.
His eyes—and most of his attention—were on the reader in his lap as he ran through his notes from his last lab session with Dr. Mwo-chi. A tiny corner of his awareness was somewhere else, of course. It was tracking that other presence like a compass needle, invariably pointing to wherever it was. He was doing his best to ignore it, however, and this time he was actually succeeding, after a fashion at least. It helped that Dr. Mwo-chi was still very much in the process of bringing him up to speed on her existing research, and the more familiar with her work he became, the more impressed he was. Not that anything she'd come up with yet offered the solution both of them were seeking, but deep inside he knew it was unlikely they ever would find “the solution” to the catastrophic damage neural disruptors wreaked on their victims. Maybe the best answer anyone would ever come up with would be to farther improve synthetic nerves, but surely there had to be some way to convince the human body to regenerate just the destroyed nervous tissue?
Sure there is, Alfred. He reached for his wine glass again. There must be, since you want there to be one so badly, right?
The problem was that while modern medicine could regrow whole limbs for people—aside from that unfortunate but large minority of the human race for whom regeneration simply didn't work—it couldn't regenerate just specific parts of the limb in question. There was no switch to grow “only” nervous tissue or muscle tissue or bone; it was an all or nothing process. That was why an otherwise sound leg whose nerves had been reduced to mush by a neural disruptor, for example had to be amputated above the highest point of neural damage and regenerated from scratch, as it were. That was clearly the best solution for a problem like that, but what did a doctor do when it was the spinal cord which had been disrupted? Nerve transplants were the obvious solution, and they'd been used effectively for less critical portions of the nervous system. Even with the best surgical technique, though, there was always some loss of function, and what could be tolerated in an arm or a leg could not be tolerated in the spinal cord. Synthetics were another approach, and one that recommended itself for limb damage in those who couldn't regenerate at all, but they, too, were a far from satisfactory substitute for the original nerve, and all of the problems with peripheral portions of the system became much more pronounced dealing with the spinal cord.
And worst of all, a weapons-grade neural disruptor was not a finely focused weapon. It attacked nervous tissue over a wide area. Indeed, its effect actually ran along its victim's nervous system, which meant a hit on a leg could damage the spinal cord—often severely, even without totally disrupting it—as high as the thoracic cord's T10 nerve. A trunk hit higher than the hip was almost invariably fatal, and even hits which didn't kill could inflict massive brain injury.
If it only left us something to work with! But it's deliberately designed to go after the axions and rip them out by the root. There's nothing left to regenerate, whether spontaneously or under regen therapy. But there has to be a way to—
His reader went flying over the balcony rail, his wine glass shattered as it hit the floor, and Alfred Harrington catapulted up out of his chair. For a split second he stood staring out across the campus. Then he wheeled away from the balcony, charging across his apartment, pausing only to open the thumbprinted personal safe in his closet, scoop out its contents, and grab a light windbreaker.
Three seconds later, two of his neighbors found themselves unceremoniously bowled off their feet as two meters of Sphinxian muscle and gristle bulldozed their way into the grav shaft.
* * *
Allison climbed off her old-fashioned, muscle-powered bicycle. She really didn't need the exercise after her morning's run, but it was her favored mode of transportation around her neighborhood, and it was always easier to fold the bike and rack it than to bother with an air car or a taxi. Besides, early spring was the very best season in Grendel, and she intended to enjoy it while it lasted.
She entered the unlock code, then hit the button to fold the bike's ultra-lightweight memory composites into a handy, briefcase-sized package. It began collapsing in on itself obediently, and she checked her chrono. She'd felt more than a little odd checking Lieutenant Harrington's schedule like some sort of creepy stalker, but she'd done it. And according to the file she'd convinced the registrar's computers to access for her, he didn't have any classes until fourteen hundred. That meant he should be free, and she didn't have to check where he was. She could feel his direction just fine—always assuming she truly hadn't lost her mind, of course—and according to her internal tracking device, he was almost certainly in his apartment. The number of which, she—like the creepy stalker she was certain she wasn't—had also obtained from the registrar.
You do have his com combination, too, you know, she reminded herself. You could just screen him like a normal human being instead of turning up on his doorstep like a creepy stalker. She grimaced as the last two words made their way through her mind yet again, but that description of her behavior was suggesting itself to her with increasing frequency of late. Especially when the dreams she'd been having started getting more and more explicit. Of course, how would you go about beginning the screen conversation with him? “Hello, Lieutenant Harrington. I don't want you to feel nervous or anything, but I've been obsessing over you for the last few weeks, and I think you're really hot. I'm not a stalker or anything! Honest! But I really want to jump your bones, so— Hello?” That's funny. Wonder where he went?
She snorted, amused despite herself, but this was a conversation she had to have face-to-face, if only to be sure that—
An agonizing, immaterial fist slammed into her from behind. Her eyes flared wide, but that was all she could do. The stun gun knocked out all other muscular control, and she went down, unable to catch herself in any way before she hit the pavement with shocking force. Pain exploded through her, and she tasted blood as her lower lip split.
Panic came on the heels of the pain, and then hands were rolling her gently over.
“Is she all right?” she heard someone ask. “That looked like a really nasty fall!”
“It was,” another voice responded in tones of deep concern. She'd never heard it before in her life, but it belonged to the hands which had rolled her onto her back. She tried to focus, but even her eye muscles seemed to be ignoring her and everything was a misty blur. The second voice's hands pressed a tissue to her bleeding lip.
“I think she's had some sort of a seizure,” the voice said, “but I've already screened for an—Ah! There it is now!”
Something grounded beside her in a soft whine of counter-grav, and then there were more hands. They picked her up, laid her on something. She felt straps being fastened across her inert body. Then she was moving again, sliding into some kind of vehicle. Doors closed, shutting off the outer world, and yet another voice spoke.
“Put her the rest of the way out,” it said, and panic was an icy dagger in her throat as something pricked her arm and the world slid away.
* * *
Alfred Harrington skidded to a stop at the university's Edgar Anderson Avenue gate. He looked around frantically, but he already knew she wasn't there. She was somewhere else, moving steadily away from him, and an almost paralyzing wave of terror flooded through him.
“Did you just see a young woman?” he demanded, reaching out and physically grabbing a Beowulfer of about his own age. “Right here—just a minute ago!”
“Hey! What do you think you're—!” the other man began, then gasped in pain as Alfred shook him. Gently, all things considered, but more than hard enough to leave bruises.
“Did—you—see—her?” Alfred grated.
“Yeah. Yeah, I did!” the Beowulfer said, looking at him the way any normal person would have regarded in obvious maniac. “Hey, ease up! What's your problem?”
“Where did she go?” Alfred snapped.
“I don't know! If she's the one you're looking for, she had some kind of turn or seizure or something. Fell right there.” The Beowulfer waved at the sidewalk. “But some guy was already helping her by the time I realized she'd fallen. Already called an ambulance and everything.”
“Ambulance?” A fresh and different fear stabbed at him as he thought of all the things that could have caused an apparently healthy young woman to collapse, yet somehow he knew that wasn't what had happened. He didn't know how he knew, but he knew. “What kind of ambulance? University Hospital, EMC, or from one of the other hospitals?”
“I don't know!” His unhappy informant said yet again. “Just an ambulance, man! White paint job, blue flashing light, siren—you know!”
“Which way did it go?”
“It went up! That's what counter-grav does. I didn't worry about which way it was headed, okay?”
Alfred suppressed a sudden desire to rip the other man's head off. Instead, he released him and began punching up a city map on his uni-link.
Ignaz Semmelweis University Hospital's ambulances wore the blue and white colors of the school. Most of the other hospitals—and God knew there were enough of them in Grendel—also painted their emergency vehicles in distinctive color combinations. Plain white was Grendel City Emergency Medical Services, but that couldn't be right either. Grendel EMC always transported to the nearest hospital unless they needed the services of a full up trauma center . . . and ISU Hospital was a trauma center. In fact, it was Grendel's primary trauma center. So if she'd had some kind of seizure and they'd transported her to a hospital, then he ought to be sensing her presence behind him, not in front of him and moving steadily farther away.
“You're crazy, you know that, man?!” the Beowulfer he'd manhandled said, once he was safely out of arm's reach. Alfred was vaguely aware that the other man was glaring at him, but he had no time to worry about that. For that matter, it was entirely possible the Beowulfer was right. It was crazy to be so certain she was in trouble—and that he knew the direction in which to look for her—when there was absolutely no evidence to prove that she was.
His uni-link showed him the map he'd been looking for and he scrolled quickly across it. There wasn't a single hospital on a direct line towards her receding presence. Assuming he was really sensing her presence, of course.
He punched in the campus hospital's com combination and waited as patiently as he could for an answer.
“Campus Medical Admissions,” the man on the tiny display said to him. “How may I help you?”
“Have you had an admission in the last five minutes?” Alfred asked as calmly as he could. “A young woman. She collapsed at the Edgar Anderson gate.”
“A young woman?” The man on the display looked down, eyes moving as if he were reading something. Then he looked back up and shook his head. “We haven't had any emergency admissions in the last ten minutes.”
“None at all?” Alfred pressed, and the other man shook his head. Alfred's jaw clenched, and he cut the connection.
What the hell did he do now? In his own mind—such as it was and what remained of it—he was certain she'd been abducted, but he had exactly zero evidence to prove it . . . and even less of a motive to explain it. He'd sound like a lunatic claiming that he'd “felt” a complete stranger being kidnapped on a public sidewalk in Grendel on a busy weekday morning. “And why would someone have kidnapped the young lady, sir?” He could almost hear the question, see the sharpening interest in the official eyes as someone wondered if the oversized foreigner had burned out a circuit or two. Probably better to invite him down to the precinct office while they got to the bottom of it. And while they were doing that . . . .
He drew a deep breath, nostrils flaring, and used his uni-link to screen for a cab.
* * *
Jacques Benton-Ramirez y Chou growled a modestly foul obscenity as his com chimed. He'd just climbed into the shower after an all-night training exercise, and he was tempted to just let it ring. But it was Allison's call tone, and he decided that he owed his twin sister an answer, at least. Of course, if she wanted anything more than that, she was just going to have to wait.
The water turned off automatically as he opened the stall door, and he grabbed a towel and knotted it around his waist. His family wasn't big on nudity taboos, but Allison might be calling him from a public place and there were proprieties to observe. Of course, he could have simply accepted the call audio-only, but he wasn't averse to letting his sister see him dripping wet. If she was going to haul him out of the shower, he could at least try to make her feel a little guilty about having done it.
He reached the bedside com and pressed the acceptance key, then frowned slightly. He'd accepted the call without limiting it, but it came up audio-only from her end, anyway. And the privacy mode was engaged; only someone whose com possessed the encryption key could have made any sense at all out of anything which might be said.
“What can I do for you, Alley?”
“You can listen very carefully.”
The voice from the blank com display was computer synthesized . . . and badly. It was the sort of synthesis any listener was supposed to realize instantly wasn't an actual human being, and Jacques Benton-Ramirez y Chou's heart seemed to stop beating.
“Who is this?” he asked.
No stranger listening to him would have believed the intensity of the fear coursing through him, but the members of his team would have recognized that soft, relaxed note and been reaching for their weapons before he was done speaking.
“I'm not anyone you'd better piss off if you ever want to see the lady this com's registered to again,” the synthesized voice replied. “The fact that I have it should suggest to you that I also have its owner.”
Benton-Ramirez y Chou stood very still, his face expressionless, knowing the person at the other end of the link could see him whether or not he could see the man—or woman—behind that voice.
“I'm listening,” he said.
“Some people are very unhappy with you, Captain Benton-Ramirez y Chou. They don't like you, and they don't like your family, and they'd really, really like to hurt your family, because they figure you wouldn't like that any more than they like you. But they're willing to be reasonable. All you have to do is give them what they want and you'll probably get your sister back without any serious damage. Of course, I could be wrong about that. But even if I'm wrong about that, I can guarantee you won't like what finally ends up dumped on a corner somewhere—or possibly several corners, in bits and pieces—if you don't give them what they want.”