The Silent War

HABITAT CHRYSALIS

Pancho dropped everything and flew on a full-g burn to Ceres, completing the trip from Selene in slightly less than thirty hours.

As her torch ship made rendezvous with the orbiting habitat and docked at one of its airlocks, it felt good to Pancho to get back down to one-sixth gravity. Been living in lunar grav so long it feels normal to me, she thought as she strode through the central passageway of the interlinked spacecraft bodies, heading for Big George’s quarters.

When he’d first been elected chief administrator for the rock rats, George had insisted that he would not establish a fancy office nor hire any unnecessary staff personnel. Over the years he had stuck to that promise—in a manner of speaking. His office was still in his quarters, but George’s quarters had expanded gradually, steadily, until now they spanned the entire length of one of the spacecraft modules that composed Chrysalis.

“Only one side of the passageway,” George grumbled defensively when Pancho kidded him about it. “And I haven’t hired a single staff member that I didn’t absolutely need.”

George’s “office” was still the sitting room of his quarters. He had no desk, just comfortable furniture scavenged from junked spacecraft. Now he sat in a recliner that had once been a pilot’s chair. Pancho was in a similar seat, sitting sideways, her long legs draped over its armrest.

“Looks to me like you’re buildin’ yourself an empire, George,” Pancho teased. “Maybe only a teeny-weeny one, but still an empire.”

George glowered at her from behind his brick-red beard. “You di’n’t come battin’ out here to twit me about my empire, didja?”

“No,” said Pancho, immediately growing serious. “I surely didn’t.”

“Then what?”

“I gotta see Lars.”

“See ’im? You mean face to face?”

Pancho nodded somberly.

“What for?”

“Amanda,” said Pancho, surprised at how choked up she got. “She’s … she died.”

“Died?” George looked stunned.

“In childbirth.”

“Pig’s arse,” George muttered. “Lars is gonna go fookin’ nuts.”

“Acute anemia?” Humphries echoed, his eyes narrowing. “How can my son have acute anemia?”

The man sitting in front of Humphries’s desk was the chief physician of Selene’s hospital. He was a cardiovascular surgeon, a large, imposing man with strangely small and delicate hands, wearing an impeccably tailored business cardigan of ash gray. His expression was serious but fatherly; he was accustomed to dispensing information and wisdom to distressed, bewildered patients and their families. He knew he had to maintain the upper hand with Humphries. Such a powerful man could be troublesome. None of the hospital’s lower ranking physicians dared to accept the task of breaking this news to Martin Humphries.

He spread his hands in a placating gesture. “That’s not an easy question to answer, Mr. Humphries. The baby has a defective gene, a mutation.”

Humphries glanced sharply at Victoria Ferrer, seated to one side of his desk. She kept her face impassive.

“It might have been caused by some stray bit of ionizing radiation,” the doctor went on condescendingly, “or even by the low gravity here. We simply don’t know enough about the long-term effects of low gravity.”

“Could it have been caused by drug use?” Ferrer asked.

Humphries glowered at her. The doctor’s self-confidence slipped noticeably for a moment, but he swiftly regained his composure. “We did find an elevated level of barbiturates in Mrs. Humphries’s blood, post-mortem. But I doubt—”

“Never mind,” Humphries snapped. “It doesn’t matter. The question now is, how will this affect my son?”

“Chronic anemia is treatable,” the doctor answered smoothly. “It can be controlled with medication. He’ll be able to lead a completely normal life as long as he takes his medication.”

“No problems at all?” “Not as long as he takes his medication,” said the doctor, with his patented reassuring smile. “Oh, there might be some incidents of asthmatic attacks, but they should be amenable to antihistamines or adrenaline therapy. In severe cases we can even—”

“What else? Humphries snapped.

“I beg your pardon?”

“What else is wrong with him?”

The doctor’s smile dimmed, then reappeared at full wattage. “His genetic screening looks perfectly normal, otherwise. With proper diet he should get to the sixth or seventh percentile, size-wise. And if he—”

“You mean he’ll be a runt,” said Humphries.

Startled, the doctor stammered, “I, eh … I wouldn’t put it that way, Mr. Humphries. The boy will be well within normal standards.”

“Will he be six feet tall?”

“Six feet… that’s about one point eight meters, isn’t it? No, I doubt that he’ll get that tall.”

“Will he be athletic?”

“Well, that all depends. I mean, the anemia will certainly be a factor in his athletic abilities, of course. But it’s much too early…”

Humphries let him stumble on, half apologizing, half lecturing on what it takes to be a good father. Leaning back in his chair, keeping his hands deliberately in his lap to avoid drumming his fingers impatiently on the desktop, Humphries saw once again in his mind’s eye his newborn son: a scrawny, red-skinned, squalling little rat-like thing, eyes shut, mouth open and gasping, miserable little toothpick arms and legs waving pathetically. A runt. A helpless, useless runt.

He had seen the baby only once, just after Amanda had died. As he stared down at it, struggling to breathe in its incubator, Humphries had said silently to it, You killed her. You killed my wife. She died giving life to you.

He had walked out of the nursery and hadn’t seen the baby since that moment. He knew that if he did, if he went back into the nursery, he’d want to kill the brat. Smother it in its incubator. Turn off its air. Get rid of it.

He couldn’t do it. There were too many nurses and pediatricians and servants constantly hovering over the little monster.

Besides, it wasn’t really the baby’s fault, Humphries told himself. It’s Fuchs. Remember that. It’s his fault. He’s killed Amanda. He drove her to use the drugs that killed her and ruined my son. He’s hidden behind her protection all these years. Well, that’s over now. Over and done with.

“… and later on, in a year or two, we can attempt gene replacement therapy,” the doctor was saying. “Or even nanotherapy, since it’s legal up here.”

Ferrer was nodding as if she were interested.

“Thank you so much for explaining everything, doctor,” Humphries said, getting to his feet.

The physician looked startled, then a flash of anger crossed his face momentarily, but he quickly recovered and got up from his chair.

“Please feel free to call on me at any time, Mr. Humphries. The entire services of the hospital are at your disposal.”

“Certainly.”

Neither man extended his hand to the other.

Once the physician left the office, Ferrer turned to Humphries. “Should I arrange a christening ceremony?”

“Christening?”

“It’s expected for a newborn baby.”

“Which comes first,” Humphries asked bleakly, “her funeral or the brat’s christening?”

Ferrer took a deep breath. Normally it would have roused Humphries but at the moment he ignored it.

“I’ll make the arrangements for both,” she said softly. “What do you want to name the baby?”

“Name?”

“He’s got to have a name.”

“Van. It’s an old family name. My great-grandfather was named Van. He ran off to South America to avoid being drafted by the U.S. Army. A coward. That’s an appropriate name for the little runt, don’t you think?”

“I still don’t see why you’ve gotta meet Lars face to face,” said Big George.

Pancho swung her legs off the recliner’s armrest and got to her feet. “Got something to tell him. Something personal.”

“Somethin’ more than Amanda’s death?”

“Yep.”

“Must be fookin’ important.”

“It is.”

“Well,” George said, getting up from his chair to stand beside her, “I can try gettin’ a message to him. Dunno if he’ll respond, though.”

“He knows me.”

“He knew you,” George corrected. “Ol’ Lars isn’t the same man he was back then.”

Pancho gave him a long unhappy look, then muttered, “Who the hell is?”