The Genius Asylum: Sic Transit Terra Book 1 (14 page)

Once the equipment was stowed, Doc Ktumba positioned herself at the side of Jane Doe’s bed and gently took her hand.

Stran Dakin had made sure the procedure was on track and then returned to his ship. Holchuk probably should have delivered Yoko and disappeared as well. But he needed to see for himself that the girl was all right.

She awakened with a gasp, nearly leaping off the examining table in panic.

“Hey, take it easy! You’re all right now. You’re safe,” Teri assured her.

“What’s your name, honey?” cooed the Doc.

Holchuk’s heart lurched as he watched her visibly screw up her courage to answer the question. “Alison. Alison Morgan. Where am I? And what is
this
?” she added, grimacing involuntarily as Yoko scrambled onto her collarbone and began busily licking salt off her cheek.

“We heard you’d lost a pet,” he told her. “This is a loaner.”

***

A while later, once Alison had calmed down enough to talk about her experience aboard the Nandrian ship, she confirmed some of Nagor’s story, and most of Holchuk’s suspicions.

Yes, she had stowed away to try to rescue her animal, a young
scurra
she’d raised from a pup. And yes, she had flown into a rage when she’d found it half-eaten inside another animal’s cage. But she’d taken to the ventilation ducts, not to sabotage the ship, but to get away from the three angry Nandrians she’d surprised near an open storage container in the forward hold. They’d come after her with weapons, terrifying her. She remembered knocking out some gratings to get into crew quarters to use the washroom, but— damage the environmental controls? She didn’t even know what one looked like. The engine room? Where was that?

Tired and hungry, her skin scraped and her clothing shredded by the rough, raised seams inside the ductwork, Alison had finally given herself up to a crew member after nearly two days as a fugitive. She’d expected to be turned over to the captain. But she’d been taken instead to the aft hold, where the green-eyed Nandrian, one of the three she had seen earlier, was waiting. Almost before she knew what was happening, she was bound and gagged and stuffed into a cage. That was when she realized she must have surrendered to one of his two friends.

As she spoke, in a tear-filled, quavery voice, Alison cuddled and stroked her loaner pet, which the Doc was letting her keep with her in the Rehab ward. Yoko had never had it so good. She lay melting in Alison’s arms, eyes closed, with an ecstatic expression on her little rodent face. Holchuk had to smile. So Alison’s brother had thought the
scurra
was a pest? He hadn’t met the Überrat.

“This doesn’t make sense,” said Teri, frowning. “Rostol and the others were acting as though you’d seen them with something they didn’t want anyone to know about. And yet, we inspected both holds, and the only contraband we discovered in either one was you.”

“What were they doing when you interrupted them?” Holchuk asked.

Alison shrugged. “Just taking some dark-colored sand out of a barrel.”

He and Teri exchanged a look. There was only one thing that resembled sand aboard this Nandrian ship.

“The seasoning?” she wondered.

He nodded slowly, perplexed.

Their job as cargo inspectors was to look for stowaways and contraband, not evidence of theft. They identified cargo and verified its origins. They weighed it only to confirm that it wasn’t heavier than it ought to be. If Rostol and his friends had been seen stealing from the ship’s hold, that would explain the need to silence a witness. But if Rostol and company were going to steal, why steal seasoning? Why not lift a handful of precious stones, or a few pigducats of rare metal? There had been plenty of both in the
Krronn
’s forward hold.

“I think there’s something going on here—”

“—that nobody is telling us?” sighed Teri, wearing a here-we-go-again expression.

“That Nagor can explain,” he corrected her, already on his way out the door.

***

Nagor and five of his crew were in the caf, tucking into huge platters of macaroni and cheese. Fruit-flavored gelatin was another of their favorites. According to the menu, the color
du jour
was green.

Holchuk stood respectfully at Nagor’s left side until he was noticed, then spoke the scripted line: “I beg to disturb your solitude.”

The alien bared his lower fangs and gestured to the Human to take the chair across the table from him. “I was only waiting for your company, my friend.”

He couldn’t help noticing that Nagor’s drink was brown. Cola, probably, with just enough citric acid added to give it a kick. The instant Holchuk was seated, the Nandrian asked, “Is the female awake?”

“Awake and talking.” Holchuk summarized for him everything Alison had told them in Med Services, ending with the question, “Why would they steal seasoning, Nagor, when there was so much more valuable stuff in the hold?”

The big alien paused before replying, “Lemonade.”

Holchuk sighed wearily. Nagor was talking in riddles again. “You mean, how is the seasoning like lemonade?”

“Lemonade is readily available in Earth space, Gavin son of Samuel, but it is outlawed on Nandor. The penalty for smuggling is severe.”

“Well, sure,” Holchuk agreed. “Because of your body chemistry, lemonade has an intoxicating effect on Nandrians. It acts like a drug.”

Nagor watched him silently, as though willing the Human to make a connection.

Finally Holchuk’s brain clicked in. “It
is
a drug. And the seasoning — does it also have… interesting effects on certain species?”

Nagor bared his lower fangs. “You understand. My government strictly forbids the trade of seasoning to off-worlders. The penalty for breaking this law is death.”

“That’s why Alison had to be silenced,” Holchuk declared. “Rostol must have known that if she told you what she’d seen, he would be killed.”

Nagor made that snorting, wheezing sound. “They told me she was
hartoon
. I saw her in the cage, acting
hartoon
. I ordered her put to sleep for her own safety. Rostol has confessed that he intercepted the order and injected her himself.”

“The girl is lucky that he made the mistake he did.”

“We are all lucky, Gavin son of Samuel. And I am shamed for believing his lies.”

The scripted response popped into his head: “The shame belongs to the liar, my friend. Your heart is unstained by his guilt.”

A strange expression crossed Nagor’s face, and suddenly the air was thick with the scent of cinnamon. Smoke and cinnamon, Holchuk amended. It wasn’t distasteful, or even unpleasant to his nose. However, under normal conditions, and even some abnormal ones, Nandrians had almost no body odor. What was going on here? Had the big alien just ‘let one go’? Was there a script to cover that sort of social gaffe?

Before the Human could speculate further, Nagor solemnly said, “In a thousand generations of travel, the Shields of Trokerk have met many off-worlders, but none that any of us have wished to call brother, until now. Gavin son of Samuel, I offer you the honor of carrying the Fifth Shield beside me in defense of the House of Trokerk. Be my brother and claim the undying loyalty of Trokerk which by your honorable ways you have earned.”

It was an enormous and unexpected compliment. It took his breath away. And if he did the Human thing and acted modest, he was dead.

Holchuk smiled weakly and nodded, not trusting himself to speak.

Chapter 19

Drew was
getting a familiar sinking feeling in his stomach. Was this going to be the pattern on Daisy Hub — everything going crazy the moment he’d filed a ho-hum status report with the Space Installation Authority? “You’d better run that past me again.”

Seated on the other side of his desk, Ruby sighed, re-crossed her legs, and folded her arms over her chest. “Which part, Chief?”

“All of it, starting with the drug dealing ring.”

“That’s an internal matter, not our concern. There were no Humans involved, and the Nandrians have already taken care of it.”

“Oh, really? What about the crewman who traded seasoning to Jensen a couple of intervals ago? Indirectly, that deal resulted in the death of the station manager.”

“True. But that crewman is on his way back to Nandor as we speak, where he will be executed for dishonoring his House — assuming that Nagor, the Chief Officer he also dishonored, hasn’t already spaced him by then. It’s a dead issue, Drew. Literally. Besides, do you really want to create a diplomatic incident and derail Gavin’s adoption, which we are all looking forward to so very much?”

Her eyes were sparkling merrily.

No, Drew decided, he didn’t, especially after what the Chief Cargo Inspector had put him through for that welcoming ceremony. Time had a way of bringing everyone down a peg or two, and anxiety was looking very good on Gavin Holchuk right now.

Apparently, Ruby felt the same way. “I can’t remember the last time I saw him so worked up,” she chortled. “One of the prerequisites for joining a Shield is to score points in a
tekl’hananni
match. Gavin has asked Lydia to design him a SPA simulation program, but he knows that won’t be much real help. He’s probably hoping that you’ll render the whole issue moot by following procedure and not letting him off the station. Will you?”

She was right about his having to follow procedure. Daisy Hub was officially classified as an experiment, meaning that none of its residents were permitted to leave the system until the experiment was over. If Earth High Council and the Relocation Authority had their way, that would be never. However, part of Drew’s assignment for the EIS was to forge as many covert alliances as he could, any way he could.

So, he grinned back at her. “Let him off the hook? Absolutely not. When does the initial ceremony take place?”

“Three days from now. Until then, Gavin is supposed to sequester himself and ‘discover his inner warrior’, whatever that means. When Nagor returns with the
Hak’kor
’s representative, Gavin boards the ship, alone. As I understand it, there are speeches and arguments and then he swears an oath of intent. Only the adoptee and members of the House of Trokerk are allowed to attend. But, Chief, wouldn’t you love to be a fly on the wall?”

“Forget it, Ruby. And tell the rest of the crew to forget it as well,” Drew warned her. “The last thing we need right now is for anyone aboard Daisy Hub to be violating the privacy of a Nandrian ritual. If Holchuk wants to talk about his experience later on—”

“—assuming he survives it—!”

He leaned forward and said, in a soft, deliberate voice, “Notify the crew that by order of the station manager, there will be no monitoring devices of any kind either placed on or directed at the
Krronn
. Anyone who disobeys and gets caught by me will be turned over to the Rangers. Anyone who disobeys and gets caught by the Nandrians will no longer be my concern. And anyone who thinks I’m not serious about this is welcome to be incredibly stupid and try me.”

Ruby’s eyes widened. It took her a moment to find the words to reply, “All right, Drew, whatever you say.”

He’d rattled her. Good. Geniuses or not, these people needed to learn how to follow an instruction when it mattered.

Drew leaned back in his seat and continued conversationally, “Now, on to the girl in Med Services?”

“Alison Morgan. Long story short, she woke up and told us who she was and where she was from. We’ve already found and contacted her parents. The Morgans live three days from here, on an Earth colony called Ventrana. They are, of course, deeply grateful to us for rescuing their daughter. They’ve asked us to send her home as soon as possible, which we’re doing, since Doc Ktumba says she’s okay to travel. You made it clear you didn’t want any communications with the Rangers, so we’ve rerouted the nearest long-hopper traversing the sector. It’ll be stopping here to pick her up in about four days.”

That was the part of Ruby’s report that his mind had tripped over. Aside from the multiple breaches of safety protocol that would occur the second a long-hopper docked with an orbiting station, Drew was dying to know, “How, exactly, did you manage to reroute a government spacecraft?”

Ruby’s gaze darted away and back. “I’m not sure of the details, Chief. Robbo took care of it.”

Robbo took care of it. She said this so casually. Drew made a mental note to debrief Mr. O’Malley at the next opportunity.

“…but since the alternative was to go to Bonelli with hat in hand, so to speak, and you’d already ordered the Doc not to ask the Rangers for any favors, we figured you wouldn’t mind.”

“Wouldn’t mind what?”

She shrugged, as if to signify that it was a triviality, beneath his concern. “Our using your Authority codes to validate the route change. We weren’t defrauding anyone,” she added, cheeks dimpling mischievously. “It was the request you would have made yourself if you hadn’t been so busy with—”

Drew recognized the argument and sighed philosophically. “Okay, I had that one coming. So, which of my illustrious predecessors decided that the assistant station manager should have access to confidential SIA codes?”

“I’m not sure, Chief. It must have been before my time. All I know is, we needed them, and there they were.”

“I see,” he said. Drew leaned forward, studying her face. “‘We’ refers to you and O’Malley?” She nodded brightly. “And was Khaloub aware that the codes were no longer secret?”

“No. I meant to tell him, but somehow it never came up in the conversation.”

Of course not. “And he never mentioned changing them, as a routine security precaution?”

She shifted her weight uncomfortably. “No. But then, like you, he sort of hit the ground running when he first arrived here. Are you planning to change the codes, Drew?”

“They’re supposed to be changed by each incoming station manager, so yes. But I can’t see any harm in the assistant manager knowing how to access them, in case of an emergency.”

Ruby relaxed visibly and sat back with a satisfied grin.

“Now, what happened to the evidence Holchuk said he left for me?”

“I wouldn’t know about any evidence, Chief. But it looked as though Robbo had emptied out Yoko’s cage onto your desktop, and—”

“Bottom line, please.”

‘Mom’ gestured dismissively with both hands. “It’s gone away.”

“No evidence, no crime? I guess that works for me…” he decided, “…this time. Final item: Nestor Quan.”

She tilted her head, frowning quizzically. “Who’s Nestor Quan?”

“Our forty-sixth crew member,” Drew explained patiently. “The only one I haven’t met yet. According to the manifest, he’s our Disease Control Officer.”

Ruby shook her head slowly. “This is the first time I’ve heard of him, Chief. And why would a hub this far out need a Disease Control Officer, anyway?”

Good question. Townsend paused, remembering his earlier exchange with the Doc. He’d thought at the time that she was challenging his decision to involve the DCO, but perhaps he’d misread her reaction. Perhaps—

“Are you sure the crew manifest is correct?” Ruby asked, barging into his thoughts.

“I
was
sure,” he sighed.

Ironically — but not surprisingly — Earth’s ‘best and brightest’ tended to do only mediocre work while waiting for their off-world postings. If the Hub’s crew manifest had been prepared by an Eligible marking time in Data Management, then it was quite possible that Nestor Quan was actually assigned elsewhere, or not assigned at all. In any case, Drew decided, he had more important things to worry about right now.

“Okay, then, Ruby. If there’s nothing else we need to discuss…?” She shook her head. “Then this meeting is over. If anybody needs me, I’ll be on E Deck, moving into my permanent quarters.”