Love and Memory

Days until Moon Cross: 11

Devon paused as she saw a familiar form hunched over the desk. "Julia, there you are. Why aren't you answering?"

The younger woman looked up from her datapad. "Sorry," she said, not sounding very. "I got involved."

Her gear lay on her desktop, its message light blinking wildly. Next to it stood a chunky mug, still about half full of what looked like tasselhead tea. It was probably one of the better remedies to the common hangover that humans would ever discover or create. Unfortunately, it smelled and tasted like goat droppings.

Devon came into her cubicle. "Wasn't your shift done with an hour ago? After the amount you drank last night, I think the last thing you'd want to do is stare at a datapad."

"Yes, mama," Julia said cuttingly, "but this is one of your projects." She jabbed her stylus at Devon's chest. "Riddle me this, Sherlock. Why would anyone commit suicide and mass murder without a compulsion chip in their head?"

Devon thought about pointing out that Julia was mangling her obscure references, and also that human history was jam-packed with people who had committed both suicide and mass murder, often together, without anything like a compulsion chip near their brains. But either might get her own head taken off. So she said instead, "Julia, I asked you to put it away. I've got Morgan cleaning up the hard drive on the ship's black box."

"I can't," Julia said. "I feel like I'm missing something."

"Maybe what you're missing is that there's nothing there to see."

"That's it? After one little setback, the great Devon Adair is throwing in the towel?"

"I'm throwing in nothing," Devon snapped back. "I'm concentrating on other, more promising avenues of investigation. And I didn't come here to fight, I came to see how you were doing. Now dial down the bitch."

Julia winced, and Devon realized how loud her voice had gotten. They both said, "Sorry," at the same time.

"Sorry," Julia said again. "I--oh, damn." She let out her breath in a whoosh, and took a gulp of her tea. She made a face, which Devon could sympathize with. The stuff was more disgusting cold than hot, if that was possible.

"How are you doing?" Devon asked.

Julia moved her shoulders in an uneven shrug that looked uncannily like one of Alonzo's signature gestures. "Now that the anesthesia has worn off, it's starting to hurt." She pressed her fingers to her eyes. "A lot."

"Have you changed your mind?" At the sharp look Julia threw her, Devon held up her hands in a peaceable gesture. "Just a question."

"No," Julia said, sadly but definitely. "I haven't changed my mind." She got up, taking a few restless steps around her cubicle. "I know this was a surprise to everybody--"

"Not so much," Devon murmured, but the younger woman missed it.

"--but it had gotten to the point where--" She stopped by her window and looked out to where the mountains sat in the distance, capped with lacy clouds. After a moment, she began to speak again, her voice cool and clinical, as if she were reciting from a medical textbook. "When the tissue begins to die, you need to remove the affected area before it spreads."

"That's something the holos never show," Devon commented lightly. "Love as gangrene."

Julia managed a smile, which looked like her first of the day. "The treatment's already working," she said. "It hurts, but I also feel--oh--relieved, I guess." She gestured at her gear. "After calling several times, he came by. Maybe he thought I'd come to my senses or something. He left after Danziger came in and offered to beat him up for me."

Devon raised a brow. "Oh, did he."

Julia threw her another crooked smile. "I didn't take him up on it. But it was sweet, in a Cro-Magnon sort of way. I thought the men would stick together."

"Don't make this a war of the sexes. You're not the only one who's hurt and upset that he's leaving us."

Julia paused and looked over her shoulder. "No," she said. "I'm not, am I?" She looked back out at the mountains. "It's not because he's leaving," she said to the view. "Or, I mean, it is, but--" She chewed her lip. "When you were first with Danziger, before you knew he was staying, did you ever feel like a--a stopping point? A way to pass the time?"

"No," Devon said. "Never. Did you?"

"Often," Julia said. "It's not as heartless as I'm making it sound. He did care about me. Does care about me. But not enough."

For a moment, there was silence in the little cubicle. The varied sounds of the hospital could have been happening miles away. Then Julia shook herself, visibly, and went to her desk. "About these scans," she said. "I really don't think I'm done. I want to study them more closely."

Devon pressed her lips together. "Julia--"

"I know you think I'm trying to distract myself," the doctor said, "but something's off here."

It sounded like the truth. Devon reached out a hand and picked up the datapad. It all looked like a tangle of wires and grey putty, but she knew that Julia could read it like Devon herself could read a crowd. She handed it back. "Just don't run yourself into the ground," she said quietly.

Uly took advantage of the midmorning recess break to run down to John's garage. He had privileges, and he wanted to see if there were any interesting pieces in the junk box that he could use for his mom's megaphone.

He expected it to be empty--everyone was down at the ship, fixing it. But when he walked in, he heard a steady, mumbled stream of words. Something told him they were cusses.

"H'lo?"

The swearing stopped.

Uly stood uncertainly in the doorway. "Who's there?"

Silence. But it wasn't the silence of nothing making noise, it was the silence of someone being quiet, which was different.

It had come from over there. Uly padded along the wooden floorboards, already smeared and spotted with grease and oil. He peered around the corner of the Transrover. Nobody. Nothing.

He frowned. He walked all the way around the dead hulk of the vehicle, but there was nothing. He looked under it. Then he climbed up the wheel and looked in. "Ryan?"

"Caught me," the other boy said with a sneer.

"What're you doing?" Uly asked.

"Nothing."

Ryan McNab's nothings tended to be a lot of something. Uly had heard it all back on the stations. Mom said he was acting out, whatever that meant, and that Uly shouldn't imitate him, but should remember that blah blah blah. Uly tended to lose track of the conversation after hearing what the latest was.

But Molly had told him that Ryan was really okay, when he forgot to be a butthead. She said he'd taught her everything she knew about computers. That must have taken forever, because Molly could make computers sit up and dance the Funky Chicken.

Remembering that, Uly climbed the rest of the way into the Transrover's bed. "Are you skipping school?"

"So what if I am? You are."

"It's recess."

"Oh, recess," Ryan mocked. "Go play with your friends, freak. Wait, I forgot, you don't have any."

It was too close to true for Uly to find a good comeback. He looked away, his cheeks burning, and saw the yarn. "Hey! Did you take that from Bess's shed? She's gonna take your head off. What're you doing with it?"

"I'm crocheting a noose." Ryan shifted in front of something. "Go away."

Uly leaned around him and saw what looked like a pile of cloth with sticks tangled in it. "What is that?"

"Isn't recess almost over?"

Now that he looked at it, he recognized one of the portable backstrap looms that they'd all used before Bess's shed got built. "Is that a blanket?"

Ryan sagged. "So what if it is?"

Uly reached out to finger one of the edges. Down near the bottom, it was full of gaping holes and puckered bunches. Up near the top, the weave got a little better, but not much. "Why's it all green?"

"I like green."

"Maybe you should put some yellow in it," he suggested.

"Maybe you should shut your face."

Uly glared up at him. He'd just made a suggestion, he hadn't said anything about how lumpy and ugly it was. "Why're you so mean?"

Ryan slumped down against the wall. "You want an alphabetical list?"

All the mean had melted away, and now the older boy just looked kind of sad and hopeless. Uly wondered how many things would be on that list that came before L.

He sat down next to Ryan and looked at the blanket again. "You don't have to steal the yarn," he suggested meekly. "Bess would give it to you if she knew you were making this."

Ryan flexed his hands a few times, making fists and then spreading them wide, as if they were sore or had gone to sleep. "You gonna tell her?"

Uly thought about that. "I don't know."

"What about school?"

"They're used to you skipping," Uly said.

"Just living down to expectations." Ryan scooted his butt closer to the loom and tied the wide strap around his waist. The other end was anchored to one of the Rover's I-beams. With some repositioning, the cloth hung taut and suspended, and he got back to work.

Knowing a brush-off when it hit him in the face, Uly got up. But he couldn't resist one last question. "Is it for Lynnie?"

Ryan's hands didn't falter. "What do you think?"

Uly was about to slide his butt down the tire when Ryan said abruptly, "Can they fix her when she's this bad? Those Terrian buddies of yours?"

Uly opened his mouth, then closed it. Lynnie hadn't woken up for the past four days. All the doctors looked at her sadly, shaking their heads. All the nurses handled her like glass when they had to bathe her or change her sheets. Uly had seen enough Syndrome kids die to know that Lynnie was closing in on the last few days of her life.

"I don't know," he said. "Maybe she'd just--you know. In the ground."

Ryan nodded. Uly thought that was it, and in fact he was walking away from the Transrover when the other boy's last words floated to him.

"It would be better than being in there."

Days until Moon Cross: 10

Julia had stared at the brain scans until she was cross-eyed. She was no neurologist, but you didn't have to be one to see a shadow the size of that compulsion chip. She'd taken more than twenty scans with doubtful areas to a staff neurologist in the past two days, and while he found minor tumors and tiny bleeds and similar, easily correctable defects, he saw no chip either. He finally said, "Dr. Heller, I do have my own work to do."

She thought, This is your work, but bit it back, since Dr. Krantz was one of her few almost-allies on staff and she wasn't about to risk that.

She went back and stared at her datapad. She knew she was missing something. She knew it.

Of course, Don Quixote knew he was charging giants, too, when galloping off toward the windmills.

She leaned back in her chair and looked at the ceiling. She remembered shingling the roofs; a miserable job that involved hot tar and nails. It had also meant burns and splinters and bashed thumbs. Her medikit hadn't left her back for three weeks. At one point, she'd had to bandage Morgan's fingers while perched fifteen feet off the ground on a half-shingled roof, trying to figure out how a grown man managed to stick his entire hand in a bucket of tar, the summer sun blazing down on them both.

Julia smiled at the memory.

Now it seemed as if her whole world had narrowed down to this one building--white lab coats and medical smells. Sick children. Worried parents. Brain scans.

Looking at it too narrowly she thought, staring up into the shadowy corners. Looking at just one thing.

She went back to the scans, trying to look at the whole thing this time. She spent an hour at it, and had settled into a mindless rhythm when something went, hold up in her head.

She flipped back one, to the scan she'd just read. She looked at the whole thing, trying to understand what had set off that little alarm bell. She found it down at the bottom. Not in the scan itself, in the biographical info.

"That's strange," she said softly.

She hit a button or two, and the scan took on the third dimension, hovering in the air. She stared at it, into it. She used her stylus to turn it around a time or two, then to open it up near the frontal lobe. She stared hard at the myelin sheaths. She got a measurement, muttered, "Neurodegenerative? Adrenoleukodystrophy? But it would have presented at least five years ago." Then she looked at the parietal and temporal lobes, gauging their development.

"That's definitely not right," she said, and put on her gear to make a call. "Dr. Krantz? I know you're off-duty--just one. I can send you the image over gear. It won't take a minute. I need you to glance at it and confirm my thoughts." She wi-fi'd her datapad to gear and ordered it to send. "Can you tell the age of that child? Yes, the biography does say it, but I want a second opinion." She listened. "Eleven? No more than twelve." Her eyes went again to the biography at the bottom. "Thanks," she said quietly. "Thanks a lot."

She signed off, staring fascinated at the brain that gently twirled in the air. Perfectly normal. Perfectly abnormal.

How had they missed this?

Simple answer. Over a thousand brain scans to look at, and only ordered to look for one thing. They'd picked up other abnormalities, but not this one, because it was so comprehensive that without that one piece of information, it looked normal. Hadn't she fallen into the bad habit herself of only looking at a bundle of nerves and grey matter, and forgetting that it belonged to a human being?

She navigated away from the brain scan and spent some time reading the history, noting the date of his last brain scan on the stations and comparing it to his birth date. Just after his eleventh birthday, she thought.

She picked up her gear and had to use the directory to find the number she wanted. She dialed, remembering the time when she'd had everyone on speed dial and only had to say their name to get them on the line, unless Danziger had deliberately forgotten to wear his gear again. And in that case, all you really had to do was call Devon or True, and he'd get an earful.

"Mrs. McNab? It's Dr. Heller, from the hospital. We'd like to do another brain scan on Ryan. Can you bring him in? Now, if possible." She listened, and her hand tightened around the stylus until the plastic creaked in protest. "You don't? Yes. Yes, it is somewhat urgent. Stay where you are. I'll help you look."

When she couldn't find him at dinner, Devon went looking for Uly. He'd taken to holing up lately, unwilling to walk through town with eyes on him all the time. She didn't blame him. Every time she saw the suspicious looks, as if he might suddenly go alien-berserk and rampage through New Pacifica, she wanted to take John's advice and kick them all over Singh Point.

He wasn't in Bess's shed, or John's garage, or even the barn. Devon sighed and leaned on the door of the stall. The mare stuck her head out and lipped Devon's fingers, hoping for an apple.

Devon smiled and knuckled the mare's forelock. She wondered if any of the colonists ever thought about the fact that the Earth horses and cows and chickens cheerfully ate indigenous feed and shared their barn with G889 species without complaint.

The ones that had survived.

A chill shot down her spine, and she took her hand away to rub her upper arms. The mare made a discontented noise--no apple!--and withdrew her head.

She tried Uly's gear again. After several rings, it kicked over to messaging. "Baby, it's Mom. Where are you? Call me. I've got my gear."

She just hoped he had his.

She called John, True, and all the advancers, plus Trent and the Ketchums. Except for Julia, everyone told her he wasn't to be found. Julia didn't answer her gear.

"Word is Ryan's off somewhere too," Morgan suggested. "Maybe they're together."

"Doubtful," Devon said, but called Ryan.

After several rings, Ryan's face appeared, but with the pre-recorded look of a mailbox message. "I'm not answering. Fuck off."

Uly's fine, he's fine, he's fine, he's just taken off somewhere and oh is he ever grounded when you find out that he's fine.

Her gear rang, and she snatched at it. "Uly?"

But it was True's face that appeared. "Devon?"

"Hi, honey. What is it?"

"I found Uly."

All her breath left her in a whoosh. "Where is he?"

"Your room."

Devon frowned. Uly rarely went to their rooms when he could be somewhere he wasn't supposed to be. "Tell him he's in trouble. No, put him on the line."

"Um--I can't, exactly."

"What do you mean, you can't?" For the first time, Devon took a good look at True's face. It was pinched and pale, frightened-looking in the mechanical light of the gear camera. "True, is he okay?"

"No," True said in a small voice.

"Is he hurt? Did he hurt himself?"

"No, he's--I think he's sick, Devon."

Devon's blood iced over. "Stay there," she said through stiff lips. "Don't move."

She tried to strike a balance between a walk and a run, and ended up with a hiccuppy mix of both. Don't overreact, don't overreact, she told herself. He'd had colds and fevers since the Terrians had healed him--piddling, one-day or half-day events that still sent her panic button into overdrive.

But True had looked so scared--

The door to her rooms opened even as Devon reached for the handle. True said, "He's in your bed."

"My bed?" Her stomach sank further. Back on the stations, he would crawl into her bed when he felt worst. She went over and knelt down by him. "Uly, it's Mom."

He opened his eyes, the whites flashing briefly in the dimness before he closed them again. "Hi."

"Hi, baby," she said softly. "What's the matter?" She reached up for the reading light above her cot, to get a good look at him.

"Nnngh!"

She stared at her son. He was buried under the bedclothes, his arms wrapped around his eyes as if the sixty-watt lumalight was the direct heat of the noonday sun. "Uly?" she said.

"He did that before," True said from behind her. "I turned on the light too."

"It's bright," Uly said. "My head hurts."

"Sorry," she said, and switched it off so the only illumination was the diffuse lumalight on the far wall. "Is that better?"

He emerged cautiously, his hair sticking straight up, but still rolled over to avoid the light. She laid the backs of her fingers against his forehead. "You don't have a fever," she said. "What's wrong?"

"My head hurts," he moaned. "And my hands feel funny."

Her stomach clenched. "Funny how?"

"Like they fell asleep. But they're not waking up." He tried to pull the blankets around himself again, but his fingers fumbled and tangled in the cloth. He burrowed in like a mole. "Did I miss dinner?"

"Yes," she said absently, thinking, This is impossible. Julia vaccinated him. Everybody. This is impossible. "Are you hungry?"

His head moved on the pillow. "Nuh. Mama, you 'member those sheets you used to have?" He didn't seem to know True was there.

"Which ones?" He hadn't called her Mama in years. Years and years. . .

"The slippy red ones."

She'd bought red satin sheets for her twenty-first birthday. They'd gone from special overnight-guest sheets to the ones her dying son liked best--

"They were soft," he said drowsily. "They had ribbons. I used to pick on them. They ripped off, you remember?"

"They did?"

"They ripped right off cuz I was pulling. I was bored and I just kept pulling and pulling and they ripped right off." Suddenly his face crumpled. "Ow--ow--owowow."

She reached out instinctively, and he buried his face in her neck, whimpering with pain. "Shhhh," she breathed into his hair, smoothing it down. "It's okay, just ride it out, sweetie. I'm here."

His breath hiccupped against her skin. "It hurts."

"I know. I know. Shhshh."

Eons later, his breathing eased and he relaxed against her, and she knew that the pain was gone. For the moment. She held him for a little while longer, then eased him back down on the bed. "I'm going to call Julia," she said. "She's going to fix you, honey. I'll be right outside."

"'Kay," he whispered.

When she stood and turned, True was there, now ghost-white. "Was I right? Is it--that--"

"I need to call Julia," Devon said, and nudged True out into the corridor ahead of her.

The girl persisted. "It's that thing, isn't it? That virus my dad had that one time. You remember? When Wentworth and Fierstein died?"

"Julia is going to fix this," Devon said. Her fingers trembled as she speed-dialed Julia. The line was busy. Devon left a message, listening to her voice shake and unable to do anything about it.

True said, "Devon?"

"What?"

"It's going to be okay, isn't it?"

Devon stared down into her face, round and solemn and scared. "Yes," she said, knowing the words came a hair too late for believability. "Yes, of course."

True's face twisted. "Don't treat me like a baby," she said, and stalked off down the corridor. Devon watched her go, thinking, Isn't that what she wanted to hear?

She called John next.

"Julia's trying to get hold of you," he said the minute he saw her face.

"I'm trying to find her," she said.

He focused. "What is it? Uly still missing?"

"No, he was in our room. True found him. John, he's sick. He's really sick." She took a deep breath. "This is going to sound crazy, but True and I--we think it's the same virus that--"

"--killed Wentworth and Fierstein?"

She almost swallowed her tongue. "How did you know?"

His sigh gusted over the line. "That's why Julia needs you. She found Ryan McNab ten minutes ago. He's got it too."