The Galactic Mage Page 29

  Prompted by the emotion-laden queries, his mind began flashing images of a little girl in a blue dress peeping out of an empty apple barrel and sing-songing him with names as cruel as only an eight-year-old sister could apply. Horror grew in his mind as the memories came rushing back; he watched her childish face mocking him over the barrel’s edge, heard her voice taunting him with “Altin Maltin, Big Fat Paltin” over and over. He could remember the helpless rage he’d felt; he felt its echo even now, clutching his chest like an iron band, growing tighter and tighter as anger turned the screw. He hadn’t even uttered a word, hadn’t cast anything as refined as the spells that he knew now. He had simply willed her into the tree, willed her with every ounce of anger and hate that a five-year-old boy could possibly employ. And then she was gone, barrel and all. Forever.

  A storm raged in his brain, the memories playing out like scenes in some macabre illusionist’s tale. He had memories of the villagers cutting down the tree a few days later when he’d finally tried to explain what had happened—even though in all honesty he hardly knew himself. He’d been too young to understand. But he understood when the lumber jacks pried strips of blue cloth out from between the trunk’s concentric rings. He’d understood that well enough. And then he’d apparently blocked it out. Until now. Until Kettle. Until Pernie had just about been killed.

  Kettle was right. He was a menace. Deep down he’d always known it, always felt the danger lurking there. He suddenly understood why it was that he needed so desperately to get away, why he needed to run to outer space: to be free of anyone that he might love, that he might kill. It was no wonder he never feared for himself. He was not the one in danger. It was everyone else. Kettle was right. And he needed to get away.

  He ran from the kitchen, back into his tower where he cast a Polar’s shield twice the size of the one he’d been using to protect himself. Under that one, he cast a second, the same as he’d been doing all along. The larger dome would prevent the orcs from coming through. Satisfied, he grabbed the Liquefying Stone and threw himself out into the night.

  One hop returned him to his furthest point in space and, wanting to drift, he let go the stasis spell that held the tower in place. With the release of the stasis energy, the tower began to rotate, making the stars appear to slowly spin around. He hoped a coconut monster would come and kill him, or at least send him spinning eternally away. But for now at least he felt as if he were free to float endlessly through the night. He blew out the lamp he’d left burning on the table and sprawled out in the middle of the floor, staring up into the spotted sky.

  Kettle’s voice ran through his mind over and over, her words an accusation. “Menace,” she kept repeating, a horrid echo in the caverns of his brain; it was a curse. And the worst part was that it was true. He was a menace. He was a killer. And he was mean. He was a mean, selfish killer. Realizing such things about himself was mortifying, and yet he knew with absolute certainty that it was completely true. All his adult life he’d fancied himself as an explorer, an academic and a sorcerer on his way to greatness. He sneered derisively as he thought about his selfish dreams. He’d never once thought that he’d be anything but a success—if not with his moon project, then with something else, perhaps something closer to home. But he’d always known that there would be something to validate him in the end. And now he saw that he was only a menace, had always been a menace. Nothing more.

  How much death would he mete out before he was finally through? How many more lives would he take through pride and ignorance? His parents and his sister were obviously not enough. So now he killed little girls too, or at least tried to get them fed to ravaging bands of orcs. That’s what he did when he wasn’t killing helpless animals or being mean to young women who only wanted to dance. Good gods. What a bastard he was. And who was next? Who was next on Altin’s list to die, the list of those who had to pay for knowing the great magical menace, Altin Meade?

  And suddenly he knew. The blood drained from his face, straight to his guts. He knew exactly who was next. He’d left Taot to fight the orcs alone.

  Chapter 30

  Orli lived in constant dread from the moment Duvall coughed infected blood into her face. The certainty of contraction hung upon her like a weight, an anchor of paranoia that dragged her already flagging spirits down. The morning after the incident with Duvall, she woke to a rumbling in her stomach. A long, lingering growl, the gastric movement woke her and set her heart racing in her chest. “Shit,” she said, sitting up and raising the back of her hand to her forehead to check if she was hot. She waited, hesitant to breathe, tensed like someone in the process of defusing a ticking bomb. She waited, listening, wondering if it would come again, that sound. It had to be the disease; the Hostile microbe had finally taken root.

  Eventually the sound came again, shorter this time but still clearly rattling through her intestinal track. Her palms were sweating, but part of her thought that perhaps it was just a hunger pang. It was technically morning after all. She waited for a third instance of the sound, but no more rattles would be heard. And she was hungry. She had only eaten once all of yesterday. She sighed.

  “God, I’m such an idiot.”

  She felt stupid for her fleeting panic, but how else could she feel after having infected blood blown into her eyes and mouth? She couldn’t help but stress when her body made a noise. Every time her flesh felt an unfamiliar itch she felt a pang of dread. Every time a forearm hair caught in the fabric of her uniform she knew it could be the twitch of an infected nerve. A spasm in her eyelid promised impending doom. Anything, and her heartbeat quickened until she was sure, sure that this wasn’t the sign she was looking for, the sign of death. And frankly, after only a day and a half of it, Orli’s nerves were raw.

  “How are you?” her father, Colonel Pewter, asked over the ship-to-ship not long after she had put her mind at ease from the most recent paranoid episode.

  “Fine,” she said.

  “You don’t look fine,” he replied.

  “I said I’m fine. Look, I’m going to be late for my shift.” And she abruptly cut the connection off.

  “Shit,” she said after doing it, and debated calling her father back. But she didn’t. She laid herself back down on her bunk. “Goddamn it” just kept racing through her head.

  Maybe it wouldn’t be her though. Maybe she wouldn’t get sick, even after that damned Duvall. She had that hope to cling to. She had made it this far after all. She had managed to hold infection off longer than damn near everybody else. But that was before fucking Duvall choked his disease right into her face. Goddamn it. Why her? She knew there was no reason to hold out hope. Not now. It was only a matter of time.

  All that day she monitored her every sense. She had to sedate two more crew members over the course of her long shift, and by the time she went to bed she couldn’t even recall who they were or even where she’d had to go. She couldn’t remember any significant details of the day. She could only remember the tingles in her skin and wondering if that perspiration was from exertion or from the onset of the fever that would start the countdown to her demise. She remembered trying to convince herself that she was being silly and that there was at least an order to the symptoms of the disease, a sequence; she remembered trying to talk herself down from the point of having a complete inward collapse, but that was really all. Her entire shift was like working in a dream, slow and hazy, with lots of missing parts.

  She woke the following morning in much the same state of mind. Lying on her back, staring up at the bright square of light that came on with her alarm, she waited to see if some symptoms had snuck up on her in the night. She checked herself mentally, taking silent account, sensing each part of her body separately and with care. That’s when she felt the tiny itch inside her chest that spawned a little cough.

  Hypochondria, she thought in the instant after the minor convulsion had come to pass. A hiccup and nothing more.

  But then she coughed again, harder, and ratt
ling sounds came from deep within her lungs. She took a long breath, intent on expanding the alveoli and driving out the nothing that this had to be. Fear chilled her, raising the fine hairs on her forearms when the itch grew instead. She tried to hold it back, tried to focus on denying it, but in the end, she coughed. A violent spasm of the lungs so brutal it bent her at the waist.

  “Fuck,” she muttered into the growing dread. The chill that was upon her drove inside and froze her to the core, waves of it then radiating out in pulsing stripes of fear that prickled her skin as they coursed down her limbs squeezing cold sweat from every pore. She coughed again, and there could be no mistaking the nature of the sound, the whole-bodied instance of an alien disease. No question. Orli had it now. Terror consumed her; every nerve tingled and she felt as if she were static-filled. Then the bottom dropped out of the universe for a while.

  Sense returned eventually, though. Oddly enough, beyond the initial gut-dropping throb of horror at the realization she was going to die, she did not remain as frightened as she would have expected herself to be. The discovery was, oddly, something of a comfort in a way. A revelation that, while perhaps not the news she wanted, at least it brought the anxiety and anticipation to an end. At least she didn’t have to wonder any more.

  As she lay in her cot waiting for the next cough to come, she actually began to ponder what she would be like when she finally went mad. She didn’t particularly relish that idea, going mad like that. Part of her wanted to just give up, to not even let it get that far. She considered overdosing herself with something stolen from Doctor Singh’s dwindling pharmaceutical supplies, something pleasantly numbing and permanent. Why fight it? And why go endure another sixteen-hour shift of insanity in sick bay, a pointless battle against an unbeatable foe? Why, when, honestly, it was a total waste of time; those people weren’t remotely cognizant by the time they were about to die. Orli wasn’t even a source of consolation to them when they bit the dust. So why bother? It would be so much easier to just lay here and pass the time alone, maybe watch some old movies for a change—the old, old ones, from way back when they made them in black and white. Those were romantic times. Good times. When men actually loved their women and sex was not just some simple sport. Life was large and complicated, a place where passion could run to its extremes. The world was big and primitive and alive. Not like here. Not like this ship.

  She sighed as she laid there, her fingers absently stroking the rough synthetic fabric of her mattress where the sheet had pulled away. She stared up into the light fixture above. No, she would not be going to sick bay today. She decided she was done. There was no point in going on. She knew she wouldn’t resort to suicide, but she could at least die after having got some rest. Who wanted to die all worn out? The last several weeks had been an endless, grueling grind that left her exhausted every moment of the day. To die rested would be nice. A real relief.

  She debated calling her father and telling him, but she didn’t want to see the misery on his face. He’d start in again with all that “every scientist on every ship in the entire fleet is working endlessly to find a cure” stuff again. He’d promise her they were close. She’d have to smile and nod and promise back that she’d keep her wits about her until the ordeal was finally at an end. She’d have to promise she’d be strong. What a batch of crap. She didn’t think she had the strength to carry out the lie. And besides, the ordeal really was almost at an end. Almost. Not the end she’d wanted, but at least an end.

  A few hours after she hadn’t shown up in sick bay, Doctor Singh’s voice came across the com. “Orli,” he said, “You there?” She could hear worry in his voice. Over the last few weeks he’d become rather paternal; they’d gotten very close. Tragic circumstances, she supposed. “Orli, speak up if you’re there,” he said. She heard him cough right before he cut the transmission off.

  Him too? She sighed again. He was so kind. And there was nobody more likely to find a cure than he was; it was a shame that he would have to die. “Yeah, I’m here,” she said, swinging her feet to the floor and punching up the com at the head of her bed.

  “Okay, just checking on you. I got worried when you didn’t show up is all.”

  “Yeah. Sorry. I just… you know.”

  “I know. It’s getting hard. But we have to keep on. I think I have it now too.” He added this last part as if it were an aside.

  She nodded. “Yeah. I heard you cough. Me too. I think I got it from Duvall the other day. Looks like we’re on the short list now, eh?”

  “Perhaps,” he said. “But I’m not giving up hope. I sent some specifications to the New Guinea team for a retroviral that might be the third leg that we need. She’s got the best science lab in the fleet. If her crew can’t handle it, nobody can.”

  Orli was tempted to say that she figured it would be the latter, but she let it go.

  “So, you coming to work today?” he asked, gently, his tone implying that he wasn’t ordering her to if she wasn’t in the mood. “I could use the company. Ashley and Mark are too far gone to help anymore. Mark was a real trooper though. I have them both on sedatives. Figure I’ll just leave them out until they go, you know?”

  “Yeah, I know. Do the same for me, will you? I don’t want to go out screaming.”

  “Done,” he said. “Same goes for me if I get there first, okay?”

  “I promise.”

  He smiled into the monitor. The lines around his eyes were deeper and longer than they were a month ago. He looked so tired.

  “I’ll be up in a minute,” she said after a long silence. “Thanks for checking on me.”

  “You bet.” His face vanished a moment later.

  When she got to sick bay she saw, to her horror, that Captain Asad was now lying in one of the beds. Doctor Singh hadn’t mentioned that. Nothing short of her own contraction of the disease could have shaken her as much. Though she detested him with every ounce of her being, the captain was the singular point of strength on their beleaguered ship. He’d held everything together when under another man the crew might have fallen apart, might have lost its collective head. He was supposed to stay healthy; he needed to. But he hadn’t. And here he was lying in the bed sweating rivers and murmuring with delirium. Not the delirium of the last stages of the disease, not those, he hadn’t begun the trembling yet, just the regular delirium of deep fever and a body wracked with disease. But that settled it for Orli, seeing him lying there like that. They were done.

  That’s when Doctor Singh let out a whoop of joy.

  She turned to where he sat at the monitor talking to an older woman in a white coat whose wrinkled face and thick-rimmed glasses filled the screen. “Really?” Doctor Singh was saying. “That’s fantastic. Get it over here as fast as you can.”

  “We need a few days to manufacture it,” the woman said. “So hold on. It’s a tricky process, but it’s coming, okay. Tell your people to hold on.”

  “I will,” he said. “I will. Just hurry.”

  Orli walked up as he shut off the com. “That sounded promising. Any chance that’s what I hope it was?” She was surprised at how calm she felt, as if she were watching herself from another room, like an outsider with no reason to emotionally attach.

  “They found it,” he said. “At least they’ve modeled it on the computer and it works. They’re synthesizing now. A few days, she said. So, we just have to keep it together.” He was grinning from ear to ear. “We might just make it after all. And here, this morning, I thought we were goners.”

  Orli nodded, smiling too, or trying. She wanted to believe. But something inside her told her that it wouldn’t pan out. Some form of letdown tomorrow, a glitch, something, that was more in keeping with how things really went. But she didn’t want to kill the mood, so she said, “Me too. I hope it works.” That was the best that she could do.

  They both stood silently for a few moments, caught up in private thoughts, before Doctor Singh shook himself and, after a fit of coughing, said, “Well, u
ntil the vaccine is here, let’s try to make people comfortable, shall we? We still have a few long days ahead.”

  Orli just hoped it was less than six.

  As it turned out, it was four days before the first doses of the experimental cure arrived in the docking bay, delivered in a remotely piloted transport ship and done in secret out of fear that the remaining crew members not yet infected might mob it and use up the limited initial doses in a panicked effort to remain that way. The first mate, one of the healthy few, and not disposed to panic, knew of the delivery and saw to it that it could be carried off in secrecy, his only caveat being that the captain get an early dose—Captain Asad was shaking violently in his bed by the time the shipment finally left the New Guinea’s loading dock. Another shipment would be coming in sixteen hours, synthesized by the Sarajevo, and more would be coming from the other ships in the hours that followed, but Captain Asad could not wait more than a few hours at best.

  Orli and Doctor Singh were there to receive it, both feeble and under siege by raging fever and bouts of vomiting and diarrhea, but, out of sheer force of will, they were intent on being there and seeing this epidemic through, devoted to their friendship where nothing else could get them through. The two men who unloaded the refrigerated crate eyed them both with the kind of looks one saves for a grenade tossed onto the floor, but Doctor Singh’s rank and the reputation he’d earned over the last few weeks as a man bent on the survival of the crew kept them from drawing their guns and running him and Orli off. They did not want to catch the disease, but they hadn’t quite lost all sense of decency. At least not yet.

  An animal urgency trembled in Orli’s hands as she and the doctor opened up the refrigerated crate and pulled the first doses of the New Guinea’s new vaccine from the swirl of fog inside. Doctor Singh’s hands shook too, and it was all Orli could do to not snatch one from him and inject herself ravenously. She managed to keep the urge in check, if barely, and after a few moments both of them were dosed.