HE REALLY LIKES HIS DOCTOR
1563 4D
The two men left on foot, keeping silence. The rain had stopped; the sky had cleared to a slight chill. In gray light from Lulith‘s first quarter, Andrew stopped and looked back on the dark roofs.
He turned upslope again as the doctor led him over a high pass among scrub trees, to descend a narrow rock-strewn path to an old road that slanted and twisted along the mountain face. “We’ve got another hour to get to the primary road, but it’s all downhill now. Just have to watch for the odd patrol. How are your legs?” the doctor asked, picking the way step by step among the outcrops.
“Nothing bad, just sore,” Andrew said, wobbling and correcting with his arms. “Can you tell me any news?”
“We’ve got a virus.”
“A virus? What kind of virus?” Andrew slipped and grabbed at one of the tough shrubs upslope, scratching the skin on his hand.
“Nobody knows. It started with an andro, they think, and they’re still trying to find him. The rumor is that it’s one of the andro maintenance viruses—“
“A maintenance virus!” These viruses built in new brain tissue, converting some of the existing tissue, neurons, and glia, to adjust senses and motor capacities for specific jobs.
The doctor nodded. “Before I left the City, there was a big argument about using these things, about whether it was safe. The corps won that one. And here we are with it now, people getting fevers, seeing visions, and some of them claiming they’ve got andro functions.”
“Like high-strength muscles?”
“Yes. Or even calibrated senses, or innerspace communication. The government jumped in and decided not to do a damn thing about it except hush it up, probably the corps pressuring them again as usual. So nobody even knows whether they found the andro, or even whether there is an andro.
“But I’ve seen some odd stuff over at Trinity, that’s a residence for mining andros, out south of here. Now it’s got humans too, people who’ve caught this thing. One man at Trinity told me he got a high fever, and then he could hear microwaves, just like the comm repair andros can. And he did; we tested him. A magnitude’s worth of spectrum, complete with multimodal demodulation. Right to andro specification, he said. But this fellow wasn’t an andro.”
Andrew pondered this for a moment as he picked his footing. “I’d love to have had that in my job, back in the City. They’d have paid me triple.”
“Maybe, but you wouldn’t have wanted the rest, the visions or hallucinations he had. He said it was andro space, innerspace, and the andros backed him up. The fever must have damaged his brain. He wouldn’t let me examine him in detail.”
“So is this thing deadly? Anybody die?”
“Damn,” the doctor hissed. “Patrol below. Sit with me here until it’s gone.” The doctor stopped, sat, and massaged his knees, looking around in the dim moonlight from Lulith. His voice lowered. “Not lethal as far as I know, except when the corpos or the CIB catch up. But I saw…" He shuddered. “I’d rather be in battle.”
Andrew sat beside him. “I heard there’s been fighting around here.”
The doctor said, “I don’t know a lot. It’s not just a local strike or a government turnover, but more like a planned uprising. The rumors are everywhere. Watch your travel, stay out of sight, stick to the remote roads. You especially.”
“Me?”
“I don’t know why they ripped you apart the way they did, but they must think you’ve got something they want.”
“That’s what Arlen said.”
The doctor paused, and looked off into the night. “In the Third Dynastic War, sixteen hundred years ago, they tore apart five million people, looking for an alien infestation. Six cities collapsed, and the viral wars killed seven million more. We never recovered the technology we lost, the Colonists' best stuff. All we’ve got left now are bits and pieces of it, and what we can hunt out of the Archives. Did they tell you what they wanted when they—?” The doctor flipped a pebble in his hand, tossed it up, tried to catch it, and missed. It bounded down the face of the mountain ahead of them. “Ah, shit. I’ve got to stop doing that. At least the road looks clear now.”
Andrew tensed, rubbing his hurting hamstrings, gazing up at the stars. He stood up again. “Arlen just kept asking about some ore sample. And music. I didn’t know what they were after. Stupid cocks.”
They descended. At the bottom, the doctor stared intently along the road. “You’ve got a few more hours of night. Stay under cover during daylight. They’ve been running a lot of mining vans through there. Oh, you might like to see this.” The doctor fumbled in a pocket, and withdrew a small clear-plast egg. Embedded in the egg was a tiny biochip, a pair of threadlike cilia curled around it.
“What’s that?” Andrew peered at the dim object, and his realization grew as the doctor spoke.
“A tracer. I found it when I probed your tendons, and I crushed its nexus. It couldn’t trace anything after that.”
“So they were tracking me?”
“Oh, yes. And don’t think they’ve quit just because this thing is dead. They’ll track genesign now – a lot slower but still a good method. As I said, Arlen must be very interested in you.”
“Why should you carry this thing around? They’ll take you next.”
The doctor smiled. “Not likely. I just wanted you to see it. First, I’ll be giving it a beamer treatment. Nothing left after that but ash. Second, the head of Arlen‘s mine security really likes his doctor.”
“Oh.”
The two men embraced. The doctor’s arms and chest enfolded Andrew in warmth and solidity. Wistfully, Andrew watched him turn and start climbing, his big legs moving ponderously but taking him rapidly upward.
Andrew turned to face the deserted road. I still didn’t get his name, but I guess it’s just as well.
