Plague of Memory (18 page)

"What is it?" I had no knowledge of the enzyme, odd or otherwise.

"These results are not viable," she said as she removed the specimen and stared at it. "Tohykul is present in the Hsktskt brain, but only in trace amounts during gestation and immediately after birth, and never in this quantity."

"Perhaps it is a synthetic form, administered before death?" I guessed.

"No. It cannot be synthesized. We would never ... " She set aside the specimen and regarded me with wide eyes. "Tohykul was once produced in the brains of our ancestors. We believe it was the result of them being overcome by an abnormal state brought on by loss of emotional control, something we only experience now in utero."

I glanced back at the body. "Does this enzyme cause the same behavioral symptoms as the infected patients have been displaying?"

"No. Tohykul was a survival response and produced the exact opposite. It flooded the body with ten times the average level of blood sugar and increased nerve sensitivity. The result was elevated strength and extreme aggression." She stepped back to the dissection table and looked inside the open cranial case. "The glands of Hsktskt infants produce a tiny trace amount of tohykul after they are born. It is what makes them so dangerous."

The dividing line between fear and aggression was not so wide. "This male is not a newborn."

"Listen to what I say," ChoVa said, very agitated now. "The gland cluster that produces tohykul cannot do so without the specific trauma of birth. The enzyme no longer exists in the infant's body after several days. There is no more reason for adult Hsktskt to produce the enzyme."

"Something caused this male's mind to manufacture it in great quantity," I pointed out. "What could be the reason for it?"

"None." She turned as if to leave, and then faced me. "You do not understand. This only happened to adult Hsktskt in our prehistory, when my people were confronted by threats that no longer exist."

It seemed I would have to pry this information out of her a word at a time. "You surely face threats now. This plague is a very large and frightening one."

"Modern Hsktskt do not feel fear of such things. In ancient times, our ancestors did, but those emotions were necessary to help them survive and fight for control of our world. Larger, more primitive life-forms like us populated Vtaga in that era. They caused those reactions in our species as a part of the evolutionary process, especially..." She paused and her throat worked. "The rogur."

I felt a surge of impatience. "Then this rogur or something like it is the cause of it."

"Not unless this centuron first traveled back in time," she told me. "The rogur as well as our other ancient enemies are extinct. Our ancestors killed off all of them ten thousand years ago."

ChoVa walked out of the examination room. I covered the body and followed her, only to find her gone and Squilyp in my path.

"What happened?" he demanded. "Why does that Hsktskt look as if she wants to use her talons on someone?"

"I am not sure. She is .. . upset." I was not certain that ChoVa would wish me to repeat what she had said or pursue her further. "She needs time to be alone now. Is there a nurse available to assist me with finishing this autopsy?"

"I will do it." The Omorr hopped across the deck and into the examination room.

The Senior Healer proved to be an efficient forensic assistant, but like the ship's database, could not provide me with information on the rogur or any other ancient, extinct Vtagan life-form.

"The Hsktskt do not share data about their species, history, or planet," Squilyp told me after I finished a series of unsuccessful inquiries. "Even their language has rarely been recorded. We know nothing about their past except that it is lengthy, violent, and ugly."

"The evolution of any intelligent species is rarely a short, peaceful, pleasant business." The clatter of an instrument against a tray drew my attention, and I watched as he tossed another clamp across the table with more force than was necessary. "There may be a connection between these ancient crea
tures, the abnormal enzyme level, and the contagion infecting the Hsktskt. Perhaps this rogur ChoVa mentioned, or another creature like it, was not rendered extinct, and has somehow infected her people."

"People?" Squilyp rolled the Hsktskt male's remains to one side to lay out an open body bag beneath it. "They are not people."

"Of course they are." I tugged the other edge of the bag to my side of the table. "I think they are more like you ensleg than you know."

"You are wrong." He shoved one of the corpse's limbs into the bag's recess. "Hsktskt are not people. They have little intelligence and no emotion. They enslave other species and treat them like cargo. They are brutes. Unfeeling
monsters."

I knew most humanoids felt distaste toward slaver species like the Hsktskt, but Squilyp's anger seemed excessive. "Nevertheless, they are my patients. If I am to help them, I must know more about this enzyme and its effect on them." I watched as he finished prepping the corpse for transport back to Vtaga. "What is your opinion as to the cause of death?"

The Omorr looked up, surprised. "Clearly systemic damage from the cryopreservative fluid and being frozen too long killed him. Cellular frost-necrosis was evident in all the tissue samples." His facial skin darkened. "That beast doctor knows this, and yet she continues to freeze her own kind. Is that the sort of behavior an intelligent, compassionate species demonstrates?"

"They are desperate." I shook my head. "Damage from the cryo is the mechanism, but not the cause. He would not have been subjected to extreme temperature if he had not been infected with this pathogen—"

"No traces of a hostile organism, pathogenic or otherwise, were present in his blood, tissue, or bones," the Omorr said, sounding testy now.

"None that we could
identify,"
I corrected. "Cherijo wrote in her journals of a contagion on K
-2
that concealed itself by mimicking the cells it infected. Something similar could be happening here."

"This is completely different." Squilyp sealed the body bag and went to the nearest cleansing unit, where he scrubbed his membranes with marked ferocity.

I picked up the chart and finished entering the last of the autopsy data, and still he was scrubbing. I went to stand beside him. "Is this need for cleanliness because you are angry with me, or feel renewed contempt for my patients?"

"Both." He lifted the edge of his single foot from the foot pedal to deactivate the cleanser, but remained staring down at his membranes, which were raw, bright pink. "You do not remember Catopsa, or what these beasts did to you while you were a slave."

"You speak of Cherijo. I was never on Catopsa, or a slave." I folded my arms. "They did nothing to me."

"I weary of thinking of you as two people." His eyes shifted sideways, and they were narrow and very dark now. "The Hsktskt took you from us. They stranded you on Catopsa and forced you to treat the other slaves, most of whom blamed you for their enslavement. The Hsktskt guards were monsters. One of them beat you, starved you, and branded you over and over when your slave marks healed over."

"Those things were not done to me." I thought of my life on Akkabarr, and how terrible things had been for us before and during the rebellion. "I have known my share of pain and deprivation, but the Hsktskt were not responsible for it." I felt chilled and wrapped my arms around my middle. "I am sorry they hurt Cherijo. It must have caused you pain to know your friend had suffered such things."

"You don't
want
her memories." His gaze shifted, going to the body bag and then back to my face. "Is that it? Is that what you're doing? Deliberately suppressing them?" He whipped out a scanner and held it under my nose. "Think about the Hsktskt."

"That is all I do." I pushed the scanner aside. "And I have had enough of this."

"Cherijo's memories may be stored in another region of the brain. She was engineered with enhanced capacity. I never thought to ... " He glanced at the neuro treatment room. "I must apply stimulation to different areas of your brain."

"No, you will not." I reached for the last of my patience. "Senior Healer, you cannot find memories that do not exist. All I have are of Akkabarr and my life there."

"If that were true, then how were you able to perform that autopsy?" He gestured toward the remains, which two nurses were moving on a gurney. "There were no Hsktskt involved in your rebellion."

I rubbed my aching temple. "As I have told you before, in the past I have performed many such procedures—"

"But not on the Hsktskt, or any other reptilian life-form. They aren't like humanoids. Aside from considerable physical differences, they can't function on ice worlds. The cold kills them. Only Cherijo had the experience to perform this procedure, and that came from her time as a slave on Catopsa. To use her skills, you would have to directly access her memories." He adjusted his scanner and placed it under my nose again. "Now, try to remember the last operation you performed on the Hsktskt."

He sounded as agitated as Reever, and yet curiously excited. It made me feel sick.

"This serves no purpose." I pushed past him. "I must check on ChoVa, and then go to my quarters. Reever will be worried. We will speak of this another time." I moved toward the door panel.

Squilyp seized my shoulder and turned me around. "You can't forget her forever." "I don't remember her." I was shouting, but then, so was he.

ChoVa abruptly entered the room. "My sire wishes to come to this vessel tomorrow and deliver the official apology for involving you and your team in our domestic problems with the outlaws." She looked from me to Squilyp. "Cease your altercation and advise me as to who arranges such visits."

I felt a quick wave of relief and stepped away from the Omorr. "We should speak to the captain about it. I will take you to see him."

"This is not over," the Omorr called after me.

Once we were outside Medical, ChoVa said, "I regret my earlier, hasty departure. It was wrong to leave you without warning in the middle of the procedure. What did that single-legged one mean by 'this is not over'?"

"The Senior Healer has been attempting to recover my former self's memories." I sighed. "Now he believes I am hiding them, or suppressing them."

"His assumption is understandable," she said. "Irrational and unproductive emotions often compel you warm-bloods into paranoia."

"Indeed." I glanced at her. "You have cold blood. What is your excuse?" She tasted my air, and then exhaled heavily. "Perhaps I suffer from close proximity to your kind." My mouth curled. "We are a terrible influence, I am told."

As we walked I told her about what little Squilyp and I had discovered from the autopsy, and then paused outside the lift entry.

"ChoVa, if I am to find a treatment for this contagion, I need a great deal more information about your people, their prehistory, and especially this rogur and the other extinct creatures you mentioned." Even my uttering the word provoked an instant physical response from the Hsktskt female. She tensed, her eyelids flared wide, and the muscles around her jaw twitched. "I know I am offending you. I understand that certain taboos are considered necessary to reinforce the framework of a society. But I ask that you set these things aside and help me, before there is no society left."

"If I can, I will," she said slowly. "It will be diffi

174 S. L. Viehl

cult. There is nothing I know about the creatures of the past, not even what they were known as. Only the rogur is mentioned by name in some old stories; legends told by the eldest to frighten the youngest among us. I cannot even guarantee they are based on the truth."

"Surely you have some history preserved of these creatures? Data, written records?" She shook her head. "Specimens? Fossils?
Anything? "

"Nothing," ChoVa stated flatly. "Hatred for these creatures was so complete that when my ancestors exterminated them, they removed every trace of them from our world. No one was permitted to speak of the old ones or what they did. Documents that contained drawings and writings about them were burned. Eventually all the people who had actually seen the creatures died, and their children were left with only a few stories. This is how it has been passed down through the bloodlines for many generations. A collection of myths that make no sense."

"Then that is where we must begin." I felt uneasy, for I knew how powerful legends could be. I had used the legend of the vral to violate the taboo against women healing men—and that had fooled whole armies. "Tell me about the rogur."

TEN

"It is possible that these prehistoric creatures preyed on the ancient Hsktskt in such a way as to inspire ChoVa's legends," I said to Reever the next day as we prepared for TssVar's visit to the
Sunlace,
"but nothing like this rogur she described could have existed."

"Why not?" my husband asked. "The universe is large, and its inhabitants diverse."

"No living thing could grow large enough to swallow a continent, or assume the form of all other living things at will, or take years to digest its victims while keeping them alive by feeding them bits of each other."

"There is one, very ancient, amoebic life-form on a free-trader world in the N-jui system that was reported to have destroyed a large space vessel by enveloping and absorbing it," my husband said as he helped me into the formal uniform jacket I was to wear at the reception in launch bay. "Stories of another shape-shifting species have circulated among the mercenaries for many decades. I know of three intelligent species who often swallow their prey whole. One of them can—"

I grimaced and stopped fastening my jacket. "I
do not want to know those details, I thank you." I noticed he was not wearing his usual black garments, but had put on a modified version of a crew member's blue-and-silver uniform. "Do you wear the Torin's colors now?"