Chapter Thirty-Seven

 

As the ramp comes down on Tyson’s saucer, my heart starts thudding fast. The last time I’d stepped off this ship, it had been as a criminal, going back to Earth to face a judgement that nearly got me shaved. The time before that it had been as a fugitive, running from Tyson just before he bit me. The mere thought of getting back aboard The Open Grenade Party Sunshine has me nearing hyperventilation.

Pero, staying out in the open’s no good either.

I climb the ramp, and my eyes zero in on the cell that takes up the far half-circle of the ship’s main level. The cell is occupied by a guy in a black sweater and tight black leather pants. He has a long, pale face with a green cast to it, like someone cosplaying that painting The Scream. He smiles when he sees me, leaping up and moving to the bars. He clings to them, pressing his face as far forward as he can. In Universal, he says, “As I live and breathe, it’s Bodacious Babe Benitez herself.”

I blink. “And you are?”

“Oh, we’ve met.” His grin gets even bigger. “A number of times. The first time, I was Hector Valencia, in Earth’s rainforest, but causality for me gets all mixed up, so maybe he wasn’t the first.”

My chest goes frío. This hombre has to be being influenced by a mindworm, right? It’s the first time I’ve talked to someone I know is infected. It’s odd how the victim’s personality still seems to color how the mindworm talks.

Pero, if that same parasite had infected Hector, also known as CyberFighter321, that means the mindworms are infecting Earth. Somehow, when it had just been Evevron and Zant, it hadn’t hit home the same way.

Scream guy continues, “You stopped the Evevron girl from killing Hector Valencia, even though he had hurt people you care about. So why spare his life?”

I move closer to the bars, pero not so close he could reach out and grab me. “Because I value life, mijo. It shouldn’t be taken away lightly.”

Brill makes a startled noise, and I realize I’ve just quoted him. From a long time ago.

“But why? What makes one person’s life so special? As a Sympathetic Mindhugger, I have hugged many people, and their thoughts are not so different from Hector Valencia’s, brutish and mean. Well, except maybe Kaliel Liam Johannsson. All he wanted was approval and love.”

I blink. Why value an individual like Hector? “Because Hector was once a child, filled with hope, and life hurt him, and he was angry. But he still had the potential to change, to be more and better than what he was.”

“No.” The guy’s smile falls away. “He doesn’t.”

This muchacho really does have a problem with causality. Hector Valencia was executed by HGB months ago, and Scream’s still using the present tense.

“I believe otherwise.” I lift my chin, look the guy full in the face. “And even if he didn’t, life is still a gift that shouldn’t be squandered. My life, his life–” I point at Brill. I know Fizzax was infected with the parasite when he’d tried to execute Brill, down at the channel on Zant. Then I point at the guy I’m talking to. “This guy’s life.”

“What is up with this guy, anyway?” Brill asks. “When Kaliel was infected, he was still more or less in control of himself.”

Scream puts his thin hands on his face. “Dashtin Kure has taken too many flawed neural enhancers. He rarely pays attention to or filters what he says. My suggestions come right out of his mouth, without me having to push very hard. I could override all of my mindhugs – had to do that to Kaliel Liam Johannsson in order to save his life when the Zantite guards attacked – but overriding on a regular basis would be unkind.”

“How many people have you infected?” I ask.

“Six hundred and twenty-three.” Dashtin looks at his shoes. “I have tried not to be greedy. Though expanding more would help keep me safe.”

My stomach fills with ice. Over six hundred people. There’s no way we can find them all.

Brill says, “Mr Kure deserves enough dignity to keep what’s left of his brain for himself. The kind thing would have been to leave him be.”

Dashtin frowns at Brill. “So even in this form, with a brain this guy is barely even using, you approve of killing parts of me?”

“I do,” Kaliel says from behind us. He and Tawny walk in the door. Tyson raises the ramp behind them. Kaliel looks down at the briefcase full of dewormer that’s in his hand.

Dashtin frowns, his eyes weakening, absolutely betrayed. “You don’t mean that. I sat so gently in your mind. I protected you, gave you the skills you needed to survive.”

“You forced me to do things that will give me nightmares for the rest of my life. An individual’s life only matters because it’s the sum of that individual’s choices. And theirs alone.”

“I guess this means we’ve settled the question of whether or not to tell Tyson about the mindworms,” Tawny says, slipping on her headphones before anyone has a chance to respond. She heads for an empty spot on the wall near the door and sits down on the floor to start sorting feed, ignoring us, because she can’t use any of this.

Tyson’s still standing in the middle of the room, mouth open, reptilian tongue moving slightly in the gap between his fangs. Finally, he recovers. “Tat’s te defense you were telling me about? Te mindworms made me do it?”

I’m afraid the shock’s going to send Tyson’s bureaucratic little heart into overdrive. I hesitate before I add, “Pero, when Kaliel told you he had a defense, he didn’t know that the Evevrons don’t want us telling anyone about these mindworms.”

Tyson groans. “And I’m supposed to save his life? On Zant?”

Brill gestures towards Tyson’s command station, with the central sphere that looks like an oversized trackball. “Sweet setup, su. Can we see it in action?”

Tyson pats the control panel. “You did say you were in a hurry to get off tis rock.”

“You should be,” Dashtin says. “You barely have enough time as it is.”

I’m tired and frustangerated and a little freaked out, so I rise to the bait. “Time for what, mijo?”

Tyson lights up the controls.

“Wait,” Brill says. He does something to the proximity bracelet. It looks exactly the same to me, pero Brill’s pained face shows how much it hurts him to leave the Fois Gras – even graffitied and disabled – behind on this planet. He probably doesn’t expect to see it ever again.

“You intrigue me, Bodacious Benitez,” Dashtin says. “I’ve seen you be brave and seen you be kind, but I want to know if you are smart enough for those qualities to matter. You have exactly six days, three hours and twelve minutes to stop me from hurting people you love in the most ironic way possible. If I succeed, we will see how you feel about the value of my life then. And to show a gesture of goodwill, I will release my hug on this wreck of a mind.”

“Wait!” I shout, not sure if it will do any good. “Por favor. My friend Kayla. Did you hug her? Where is she? Is she still alive?”

“The Nitarri girl? She’s alive. But she’s not who we’re playing for. And you’re not getting any more clues. I really must be going.”

“Wait!” Brill says.

“What?” Dashtin sounds annoyed.

Brill shrugs. “Who named you Sympathetic Mindhuggers?”

“The ones who engineered me did.”

“Pero why did they make you?” I ask.

Something subtle changes about Dashtin’s face. It’s slacker, less focused. I get no answer.

Why would the Evevrons have intentionally created something as monstrous as this Mindhugger? Something that sees people as nothing more than interesting variables to run experiments on? Were they really trying to create a fleet of supersoldiers, able to coordinate an attack?

Poor Kaliel, at the mercy of such a cold, amoral force.

And poor Chestla, if whoever made it figures out that she knows. I fear for her, back on their planet.

 

“So where are we headed?” Tyson asks.

Six days. “If it’s somebody I left behind on Larksis, they can forget it. We’re weeks away. So it’s got to be either Zant or Earth. And either one will be cutting it close.” I feel paralyzed. I’ve never realized how equally centered Evevron is between Earth and Zant. It’s about five days, either way we go.

“Zant it is,” Tyson says.

“How’d you decide that?” I’m still flustered.

“Kaliel promised to show for trial on Zant, anyone following us is less likely to land on Zant, and you said Zant first, which means tat subconsciously you tink tat’s te more likely spot.” We’re already in motion. “If you tink of a compelling reason to go to Eart instead, you have twelve hours for us to turn around.”

Kaliel’s still standing there, watching the brainmelted guy as he moves back to the bunk, pulls a table close to him and starts putting together about a million-piece puzzle involving different shades of blue. That’s the thing about bad neural enhancers – on some level they can still turn a person into a genius, pero at the expense of everything else. Brill’s also watching those thin pale-green hands moving puzzle pieces, and I wonder if mi vida’s thinking about the drugs he and Darcy were trying to sell – which were of just this sort. I wonder if he still believes that putting all commodities out there – with a few war-mongering or suicide-inducing exceptions – is still the best way to prevent conflict. He said I could ask him anything. Pero what if I’m not sure I want to know the answer?

Kaliel looks down at the case of dewormer in his hand. “I wish that thing had stuck around a little longer. Then I’d have really given it a piece of my mind. Slowly and painfully.”

“If you actually mean that, su, then I did misjudge you.” Brill nods towards the guy in the cell. “And so did he.”

Kaliel is silent for a few beats. “I guess I don’t. It’s just – I can’t explain how much of a violation it is to be manipulated from inside your own mind. And I’m about to have to die for the things it made me do. I know it must look like I keep volunteering to play the martyr, but I like breathing. A lot. And there’s a girl out there who loves me, and I just found out that she’s alive somewhere, lost or hurt, and I won’t be able to go to her. It’s not fair.”

“No, it’s not fair.” Brill crosses his arms, and his jacket shifts, showing his injured wrist. “But you can’t be angry at the Mindhugger. It’s like a child – a stupidly powerful child – trying to learn what it means to be a person. You heard what it told Bo. It doesn’t understand what an individual is, so it doesn’t understand why it should value a life, not even yours, though it spent time inside your mind. Getting mad at it is like getting mad at a shark for attacking a surfer that looks like a seal from under the water.” He’s taking my side of the argument he’d witnessed between me and my brother the night we’d all watched Jaws XXII.

“Then who should I get mad at?” Kaliel snaps. He pushes the case of dewormer into Brill’s hands.

“It told us it was engineered. You should be mad at whoever created it.” Brill’s face doesn’t look somber often, but when it does, he seems older than he really is, the weight of all that Krom history settling into the corners of his eyes and the edges of his mouth. “There are some things people have no right to do. Just ask Tyson for the letter of the law.”

Tyson swivels around in his command chair. He’s already got his sun lamps on, so he looks both spotlighted and thrown into shadow. “Mindhacking has been illegal since te foundation of te Galactic Court. It’s one of te few times Galactic Law trumps local law – like with cases of attempted colonization of a civilization’s home planet.” Dios mio, he sounds so much like a lawyer. He’d have become one too, if life was fair. “Anyone making – or ordering the creation of – a mind-controlling parasite could face execution. And te organism itself would have to be destroyed. Do you have any idea who created it?”

Kaliel’s face has lost color. Maybe, like me, he’s thinking of all the council members we met on Evevron watching their children play in the pool. Because it’s pretty obvious that they created the mindworms. We just don’t know why.

“I’d rather not say without proof.” Now that’s the Kaliel I know. He puts his hands in his pockets. “So what do you guys know about the Nitarri?”