Toxic Page 15

  Gammand grimaces. “You know this ship better than anyone here. Medicines, poisons, who knows. You hated her last night.” He looks down at Miki. “Maybe you hate us all, too.”

  I was so angry last night I almost punched her. And the way Portia and Gammand are looking at me, they remember, too. My words are worthless.

  Portia kneels by Miki’s prone body. She loosens the shirt near her neck. Ugly red and purple marks mar the pale skin. “They look like finger marks. Narrow ones, belonging to small hands.” Her eyes look at my hands, and I flip them over. They are pink and clean. They are small, as small as those that wrung the life out of Miki.

  “I swear, it wasn’t me!”

  “It looks like Miki got caught by surprise. Her equipment fell down here, and there,” Gammand says, pointing to some areas between the storage vacuole eggs. “We’ll have to retrieve it and bring Miki’s body back.” Gammand stands up. “I’ll get a body bag.” He looks at everyone. “You should know, this is all on record. Miki’s own voice and video links show she was attacked from behind. We have no visual on Hana at that time.”

  “It wasn’t me!” I repeat, but no one is listening.

  Gammand walks us out of the containment unit, but after the third door shuts behind us, he turns abruptly and speaks to Fenn and Portia, pointedly ignoring me.

  “Someone has to keep an eye on her, at all times,” he says. “And we should arm ourselves and be on alert. Just in case.”

  “Why don’t we just lock her in the Selkirk? If she’s dangerous, it’s better to keep her away from us. And then she can’t interfere with our work,” Portia suggests. My heart, already trilling a bit too fast, starts thudding so hard I can feel it in my neck. I can’t go back to being alone and locked up. Not again, not now.

  “But I didn’t do it!” I say again. The way they all turn to look at me, it’s like there’s a filter between me and them, and the filter is all they can see. The one that says, murderer. “Please. If I had fought Miki, you know she would have fought me back. She’s got at least two hundred pounds of Argyrian muscle I don’t have. Do I look like someone who’s just had a battle to the death?” I yank my sleeves up, showing the lack of bruises. I lift my tunic to show my legs—completely unmarred. “No bruises. Because all I did was wake up and eat breakfast!”

  Slowly, doubt begins to soften their expressions. Gammand scratches his brown cheek, and even Portia’s eyebrows twitch as she looks over me. Fenn’s lips twitch, and relief warms his eyes.

  “Let’s see what Doran says.” She calls up Doran on her holofeed, and he comes through, but it’s all grainy pixels. He’s actually been listening in on Gammand’s feed this whole time.

  “Let her stay with you, but no unsupervised moments.” A bout of static interferes, followed by his face popping back. “…be on alert. You have no weapons but that tranquilizer gun, so arm yourselves in any way you can. There might be another person hiding on the ship we are unaware of. You can retrieve Miki’s biomonitor and use it in Hana. That will give everyone some peace of mind.”

  I nod, reluctantly. If they want to tag me like a little pet, so be it.

  Fenn also nods, and I sigh in relief. Fenn gives me a sharp look at my exhalation, and I try to sober up my expression.

  “On to a more important question,” Portia says. “Will Miki get her compensation if she’s been murdered? I’d like to know.”

  “Me, too,” Fenn says, a grim expression on his face.

  When Doran doesn’t reply immediately, I realize the answer isn’t a good one.

  “It depends. We’ll run some more tests on her body later today, but if this wasn’t some sort of…toxic outcome from the ship…then, no. She wouldn’t be compensated. And besides, she only finished one quarter of her research objectives.”

  Fenn curses, and Portia claps her hands on her face. Gammand looks like he could stab Doran right in the eye if he wasn’t a hologram.

  “That is so fucking unfair, and you know it, Doran,” Fenn hollers. “Miki is dead! This is not why she came here. This is not the death she wanted!”

  Doran says, “It’s in the—”

  “No. Don’t you dare say ‘contract,’ Doran,” Portia says, taking her hands away from her face. “You talk to ReCOR. You tell them there is an external force at play here, and it is altering our plan.”

  “I’ll talk to them,” Doran says, but he sounds anything but convincing. “In the meantime, Miki was our radiation specialist. Everyone will have to share her work now. When Gammand goes to retrieve Miki’s body, you’ll need to do some data collection on her corpse.”

  The word “corpse” chills me, and it bothers Fenn, too. He flicks his eyes down to his feet and nods. Portia peels off to a different sector of the ship, and Fenn walks to the outer circle. He seems to be heading for the bridge.

  “Where are we going?” I ask, running to keep up.

  “Come on,” he says, his face still troubled. “Let’s get the stuff I need, and we’ll go back with Gammand and run a few tests.” Along the way, he starts launching his nanobots and microbots into the air, sending them into the hallways ahead and behind us.

  But he sighs incessantly. “God, Miki. I can’t believe… I need to keep working. I’m behind, and now I have to take radiation readings, as well, with Miki’s stuff. God, this sucks.” He takes out a larger card from his jacket, with drones the size of fingernails.

  I pause to face the wall. Now we’re back in the alpha ring, where the floors and walls are a healthy medium blue. “Cyclo,” I say. “Fenn needs to send some of his bots to check your health. Into the matrix, not the corridors. Will you let him?”

  Cyclo’s colors stay flatly blue around me.

  “Oh. I’ve already done this. I asked permission before, and she was okay with it.”

  “She was?” I say, incredulous.

  “Yes. She spoke to me in your room, you know. She…helped me cook,” Fenn says.

  “She did?”

  “Yes. She helped me get the water, find everything.” Sadness contorts his eyebrows, only for a second. It makes me wonder if they only talked about cooking.

  “Cyclo isn’t responding verbally,” I say, frowning.

  “Noted for the record,” Fenn says. I realize that he’s taking down data even as we’ve been walking. It irritates me a little—maybe I want Fenn’s attention all to myself. I bite my lip. Stop it, Hana. It’s not all about you.

  “I wonder if she responds to this,” I say.

  I kneel on the floor, to maximize the contact of my skin without actually presenting my body to be taken in. I spread my palms down, fingers splayed, and try to let her read my thoughts.

  Cyclo. Are you all right? They won’t let me sleep inside you anymore. They say you’re not safe, that you’re getting sicker. Can you feel it? Do you understand what’s happening? What happened to your southeast quadrant with the vacuole leak?

  I am experiencing some frailty of my backup safety systems. But I have been relocating my energy sources to keep my core functions operative.

  Do you know why…you’re experiencing this frailty?

  Certain populations of my cells are becoming senescent.

  I stop here. I can’t talk more. I can’t bring myself to tell her, or ask her—Cyclo, do you know you’re dying? How can one ask that of the person who’s cared for you from when you were only one cell big? How?

  I pull my hands from the floor matrix, and my imprint on Cyclo flattens out.

  “Well? What did she say?”

  I tell him, particularly about what she’s doing to try to keep herself functioning. “We should tell the others. It may help us figure out how to help her. We’re still gathering information on that hormone boost, but even if it works, it may not be enough.”

  “Yes. Senescence is exactly what’s going on. She can’t contain her toxic metabolites,
her cells are dying, and the ones that aren’t dead are malfunctioning.” As we walk back to the bridge, he starts muttering to himself. “On Ipineq, my planet, we were able to slow the aging process. Earth humans do it, too, with stem cell transplantation. Get some nice young DNA and put it in cells that grow to replace whatever’s not working—chondrocytes in the knee joint, immature brain cells after strokes.”

  “I wonder if Cyclo still has stem cells,” I say, but Fenn shakes his head.

  “Doesn’t matter. We only have the equipment to record information, not do treatments or rehab for an entire two-hundred-thousand-metric-ton ship. I mean, you did that hormone release thing. That was already on the ship.”

  I remember Cyclo’s recent exploded vacuole and us running for our lives, and I’m even more sad than before. Maybe it didn’t work at all, or it was just too late.

  We enter the bridge. It’s messier than before, as the crew have already settled in and equipment is being used constantly. Portia is already leaving. She now has a long, thin piece of metal broken off from one of the supply containers. A short, crude spear. She says something to Gammand about doing some analyses of the borders between the contained, toxic areas of Cyclo and the normal ones. Gammand makes sure his tranquilizer gun is secure at his thigh. He sees us and hands me a bag with a strap. I take it, putting it over my shoulder.

  “It’s one of Miki’s radiation tech packs. She had the settings all done, but I guess someone will have to do the analyses post—”

  He stops before saying “post-mortem.”

  Fenn picks up a lumpy backpack full of what must be more drones. Gammand walks over to an equipment container and pulls out a body bag. A hover gurney has already been set up, and he gently pushes it to the door with two fingertips. He looks at me, and then Fenn.

  “Don’t you want some sort of weapon, Fenn?”

  “No. I’m good.”

  “That’s rather unwise.” He gives Fenn a helpless look, like he’s asking to be murdered. “Fine. Let’s go get Miki.”

  He and Fenn hardly talk. At first, I think they’re really unfriendly to each other, until I try to draw closer and Fenn holds a warning hand out. Gammand stares coldly at me, and when he sees Fenn’s gesture, he looks relieved.

  That’s when I realize Fenn and Gammand know each other in a way that doesn’t require words. Gammand is upset, and Fenn knows this, and also knows Gammand needs quiet and space. Especially from me.

  I’m jealous of this thing they have, the crew. The banter between Portia and Fenn; how they always give Gammand the room for the silence he needs, for hours at a time; how they grieved for Miki and could see beyond her sour moments, which I could not. They are so different, but they had something to share—nine months of experiences I won’t have with anyone else in the universe.

  I follow them, and all the way there I keep thinking of Miki and her open eyes, the purple marks around her throat. And weirdly, I think of my hands on her throat, squeezing, squeezing, squeezing. About when one would stop squeezing, and how hard, and how to keep holding on if that person was fighting you. I don’t understand why such intrusive thoughts enter my head. I’ve never considered the concept of hurting another human, but it makes me sick to my stomach. My days, all of them, had been spent reading about Earth history and knitting and singing and climbing the walls. Learning everything I could about Cyclo. Dreaming of milking cows, gathering warm chicken eggs, or pounding sweet rice flour to make injeolmi, my favorite sweet tteok covered in roasted soybean powder. I have never dreamt of such a thing, nor has Cyclo ever put that dream into me.

  Or could she have? Could Cyclo be capable of telling my subconscious to do something like this?

  “Hana. What are you doing?”

  I’ve stopped walking, and I’m staring at my hands, making a clawing gesture, as if choking a ghost in front of me. Fenn is watching me with startled eyes.

  “Oh. Nothing.” I put my hands quickly behind my back.

  “Well, we’re here. Come on. I can’t leave you out here. Doran says we have to stay together.”

  “Of course.”

  We’re outside the delta containment unit. Miki’s in there. Gammand has already gone ahead of us with the body bag over his shoulder and the hover gurney somewhere in front of him. Being heavier, he has less problem with the low-g here.

  “We have to take some radiation measurements on her,” Fenn says grimly. I nod and follow him into the cavernous containment area, already better at using the handholds to maneuver near the egg-shaped vacuoles. As we approach the bend of the corridor where Miki is, Gammand hollers. He’s about twenty feet ahead of us, and his voice echoes weirdly from the bulbous walls.

  Fenn and I look at each other.

  “What is it?” Fenn hollers back.

  “It’s Miki.” Gammand turns around and drops the body bag, which slowly drifts to the floor. “She’s gone.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  FENN

  “Gone?” I say. “What the hell do you mean?”

  “I mean she’s gone, dammit! I can’t understand—I mean, look,” Gammand shuffles to the side of the very narrow walkway to show us, pushing the gurney aside, too. His brown eyes are wide with astonishment, and his hands are shaking. “She was right here. God, where is she? What happened to her body?”

  There’s an indentation where Miki’s body was resting. I touch the matrix, and it’s oddly warm. If someone took her, they can’t have gone far. It’s one thing to kill her; it’s another thing to mess with her remains. My body is hot with fury. I try to run to the far end of the walkway, where there’s a door. It’s hard in the low-g.

  “Where are you going?” Hana hollers, but I’m too busy searching to answer.

  I look up and down the curved, blue hall, but no one is there. It’s perfectly silent, except for that preternatural hum that is Cyclo’s metabolism churning away. There are closed doors that go to Cyclo’s core, full of more toxic-containing vacuoles, and passageways that go back down to the gamma ring. All along the way, I don’t see any scratch marks or anything that would show that Miki was dragged away. Then again, Cyclo probably self-heals.

  I turn around. Gammand is talking aloud into his holofeed, and I see him shake his head and gesticulate with agitated, jabbing motions. He turns off his holofeed and faces me.

  “I just confirmed with Portia. She didn’t touch the body.”

  “And I was with Hana this whole time, so it wasn’t her.” Another idea comes into my head, one that frightens me utterly. “What if we aren’t the only ones on this ship? We didn’t expect Hana. What if someone else is on board?”

  “That can’t be,” Gammand says. “It can’t.”

  “That would explain why the biomonitors showed that the murder had nothing to do with the crew.”

  “Hana. Can you ask Cyclo if someone took Miki’s body? If Cyclo took her, maybe?”

  Hana nods. When she put her hands on the floor, Gammand shakes his head.

  “No. No one will know if you’re making up the answers. We have to know what the ship is saying.”

  “Can I try to listen in?” I ask Hana. She nods.

  “Remember when you were in the matrix? It helps to relax and empty your thoughts, and you can hear her with more clarity.” Hana sinks her hands into the floor, and I put my hands next to hers. “Make sure they touch,” she says, and I let some of my fingers overlap with hers.

  I hear Hana’s voice. It sounds like a dream within a dream, feminine and light and very gentle. God, this is weird, having her voice inside my head, transmitted through Cyclo and skin.

  “Where is Miki? The girl that died here?” Hana asks. My own fingers and arms tingle.

  The Argyrian Miki is deceased. Cyclo’s words are very serene but very flat.

  Hana tries again. “But where is her body?”

  I do not understand the
question.

  “I mean, Cyclo, did someone take her body away?”

  No.

  Hana crinkles her eyebrows together. “Cyclo, did you move Miki’s body?”

  No.

  “Was someone in this room before we came here?”

  Yes.

  “Who was it?”

  I do not understand the question.

  Hana and I exchange worried glances. She speaks aloud to me and Gammand. “I don’t get it. She’s not answering my questions, like she’s missing parts of her memory.”

  “Let me try,” I say. I close my eyes, to try to speak without speaking. I guess it’s like talking to yourself in your head. Only other people are listening, too.

  “Cyclo,” I say silently. “Hi. It’s Fennec. Can you tell us how many humanoids are on this ship?”

  One thousand and one.

  Hana sighs. “That’s an old number. There is always a census of one thousand crew members, which includes those being gestated. Plus one, which was me. She’s confused.”

  “We have to read data directly from her, then, instead of asking her questions. She’s not reliable, the sicker she gets,” I say.

  Gammand snaps his fingers. “Wait. Miki’s biosensor. We can track her body that way.”

  “You mean this?” I lean over and pick up a tiny piece of metal. I recognize it—it’s the biosensor we had implanted into our necks when we first boarded the Selkirk so many months ago. It’s a tiny little capsule, only a few millimeters long. “Whoever cut it out of her neck did a quick, clean job.”

  We walk back to the bridge. Hana lags behind. I keep looking back to find her gazing at the walls and the ceilings as if she’s reading some message that isn’t there. Finally, after the fifth time of telling her to hurry up, I ask, “What is it, Hana? What are you looking at?”

  “Can’t you see it?” she says. She’s still staring at the walls, a medium blue—not as vibrant as before, but not the sickly pale color we’d seen elsewhere. I look around. What is she seeing? She points. “The purple waves. They’re running in stripes and—oh, little swirls. I’ve never seen that before.”