Return to Dakistee (33 page)

"I'd definitely remember if we'd met before," Christa said.

"Let me give you a clue. I've changed considerably since we were on Raider One."

"I was never on Raider One. That was Jenetta."

"Yes, but you
are
Jenetta after all. You may have a separate identity now, but you have all of her memories."

"There were no children among the slaves on Raider One and you're too young to have been anything else at that time."

The woman smiled widely. "And yet I was there at that time."

"What's your name?"

"Not just yet. I've waited for this moment for a long time and I'm having too much fun to end it prematurely."

"Well, Miss Notjustyet, I'm not amused by having that pistol pointed at me. Would you mind lowering it?"

"Not at all," the woman said as she turned her head slightly and said, "Kasim, come in here."

In response to her command, the chief assistant to the dig site labor supervisor appeared in the doorway. He was also carrying a pistol. As he aimed it at Christa, the woman lowered hers.

"Better?" the woman asked.

Christa grimaced slightly and didn't bother to respond to the absurd question.

"I'm sure you know Kasim. He has a secret that concerns you. Would you like to know what it is?"

"More riddles?"

"An old one. Tell her Kasim."

Kasim grinned and said to Christa, "I'm your father."

Christa looked at him like he was crazy, then suddenly understood the remark.

"Yes, you do understand, don't you?" he said as he saw the change come over her.

"The pieces fit. Now tell me why?"

"I needed to experiment— to ensure— and to prove, that I understood the process. Didn't you ever guess it might be me?"

"You were one of the suspects, but there was no way to establish it one way or the other unless someone confessed. It would have been foolish to simply point fingers."

"Yes, that's true. I would have denied it, of course."

"Why tell me now?"

"I thought you'd like to know. And I'll be leaving here today, finally, so there's nothing you can do to me."

"Going to another dig site?"

"Never again, I hope. I have Doctorates in Archeology and Antiquity Preservation and Evaluation. It's been hell playing nursemaid to the simpletons at this site. Miss— has promised me a post befitting my education and abilities now that I've put in my time as a lackey at this flea circus."

"Taking a step backward for a moment, how did you get into the facility sixteen years ago?"

"Through the sewer tunnel that idiot Priestly found. The day after he found it, he was all over the place bragging about a new find. Of course, he wouldn't give any details or tell anyone where it was, but I followed him the next day when he returned to the immediate area to continue his explorations. It was easy to locate it after he was gone."

"And the Zelem?"

"From old man Peterson's tent. Anyone could walk in there, but my position enabled me to do it without anyone giving it a second thought. I had taken some of his Zelem months earlier and so it was available when I needed it."

"Okay," Christa said, looking at the young woman, "one mystery solved. Now how about the other one?"

"Not just yet. I want to savor this meeting."

As she had been talking, Christa had inched carefully closer to the pile of clothes on the bed. At the bottom of the heap, and not visible presently, was the laser pistol she had gotten from Lt. Uronson the day of the attack. She had no desire to harm either of the people holding her at bay, but she would do whatever was necessary to keep them from harming her. That they would aim pistols at her meant they intended something sinister. They couldn't just walk away now and expect to have the incident forgiven and forgotten. At the very least, they would have to stand trial for threatening the safety and well-being of a Space Command officer. So it might be that they intended to harm her and escape in the confusion. If that was the case, she should keep them talking as long as possible. And if an opening occurred, she had to make a grab for her pistol.

"So," Christa said, "assuming you were on Raider One eighteen years ago, how old would you have been at the time?"

"I was as old as my tongue and a bit older than my teeth," the woman replied.

"At least that's an imprecision I can understand. But it doesn't provide any clue to your identity. You say we've met before but name a time when you should have been a small child and specify a place where no small children were present. That would have to mean that you
weren't
a small child at the time."

"Bravo, Christa. I knew that exceptional mind of yours would eventually tumble to the correct solution, although it would seem so unthinkable to anyone else that they wouldn't dare mention it."

"In a book titled
The Sign of Four
, famed fictional detective Sherlock Holmes said, 'When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains,
however improbable
, must be the truth.'"

"Too true."

"Since you say we met, I would have to assume it wasn't a time when Jenetta was unconscious. One can hardly meet someone when they are unaware of everything around them."

"True again. You were most definitely aware of my presence." The woman smiled. "This is such fun. Are you having fun?"

"The crewmembers Jenetta stunned when taking the two battleships weren't technically on Raider One. They were merely docked with it, so the meeting couldn't have occurred on one of them."

"I suppose I could argue the point since the ships were docked, but I won't. I wasn't one of the crewmembers."

"Jenetta only met two people outside the detention center. There was the old hospital attendant who took her for her brainwashing sessions and the aged male doctor who performed the work. So you couldn't have been either of them."

"I could also argue that point, but I won't. I wasn't either of them."

"All of the guards in the detention center were male, so you weren’t one of them. And you look nothing like any of the female slaves who were rescued. It seems I've run out of possible candidates."

"Pity. You were doing so well— especially with that Sherlock Holmes hypothesis. Why did you give up on that?"

"I know firsthand of the work the Raiders have done with age prolongation. And Mikel Arneu told me of the intensive efforts to find a way to restore youth, but those old people were all men."

"Exactly. So why did you eliminate them?"

"You're saying I shouldn't have?"

"When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains,
however improbable
, must be the truth."

"You're a
man
?"

"Come now, Angel, do I look like a man?"

"You…"

"Uh oh, I've let the cat out of the bag, haven't I?"

"Only one person has ever called Jenetta, Eliza, and me
Angel
."

"It seems that our game is nearly over."

"You can't be Mikel Arneu."

"Why not?"

Christa just looked on in silence as she thought. Finally, she said, "Because Mikel Arneu had such low esteem for women that he would never have become one."

The woman laughed. "Yes, I was that way. I guess I've changed in more ways than one. Perhaps it was seeing things from a different perspective that changed my attitude. I admit that I miss the strength of my male body, but there are certain compensations."

"Such as?"

"You would know as well as I do. Instead of threatening everyone to get them to do my bidding, I've learned that cajoling is just as effective— sometimes more so with men. Most are exceedingly eager to please me."

"But why change your sex? You never seemed to have difficulty getting people to do what you wanted."

"As you know, I was pressing my scientists to find a way for eternal life and for a way to restore my lost youthful looks. Year after year they worked and year after year they failed to find the secrets. Like you and your
sisters
, I had received the age prolongation treatment so I knew I had possibly thousands of years ahead of me, but I also wanted to be young again. Well, my scientists finally found a way, but there was a qualification. It seems that the youth restoration process they developed would only work on women. It had something to do with the estrogen levels in the body or something. Men don't have sufficient levels of the hormone for the process to work.

"I kept after them to find a different formula, but after a decade of work they said it was no use. They said they could only restore youth to female bodies. What was I to do? If I wanted a young body, I had to take the plunge and go through the DNA manipulation to change me to a woman. You'll no doubt be pleased to hear that the pain you experienced with your DNA manipulation was like a walk in an EVA suit compared to what I went through. Apparently, creating a uterus and ovaries takes massive amounts of energy. I was always hungry and it seemed like I never stopped eating throughout the day. But that wasn't the worst. It was a full year before I reached a point where I didn't groan in pain every time I moved. Reconstructing a pelvis is no simple matter, even when it's done without surgery."

"My, my, how you do carry on," Christa said with a smile.

"I knew you'd be pleased to hear how I suffered."

"You have no idea. Tell me, what name do you use now?"

"You can still call me Mikel. There's no sense giving you my assumed name, Angel, and you'd probably feel compelled to make some remark I wouldn't like."

"You surely don't think you can take me out of here and send me to a whore palace somewhere, do you?"

"That was part of the plan at first, but things sort of got out of hand here with those aerial attacks. That wasn't us by the way."

"I know. We've learned who was responsible."

"Then, when I discovered there was no superior technology down here like the cloning process at the other facility, the trip appeared wasted. Still, I couldn't just leave without paying a visit."

"You don't…"

Christa's words were interrupted by a knock at the door. When Arneu and Kasim turned partway around at the sound, Christa made a move for the laser pistol. She knew they intended to kill her before they left. As long as no one outside the Raider organization knew of his sex change, he could come and go anywhere at any time. Now that he had told her, he couldn't let her live. Christa knew this might be her only chance to survive the day.

As Christa swung back with the pistol, she saw that Kasim was also turning back. He spotted the pistol in her hand and fired his lattice pistol at the same time Christa fired.

All three rounds from Kasim's three-round burst hit Christa. The first lattice round entered her right side just below the rib cage. The second round hit her right shoulder, cutting through muscle and ripping up everything down to the bone. The third round hit her left cheek just ahead of the ear, removing a swath of flesh from there to the rear of her skull. Most of the left ear was gone, along with the skin over the skull behind the ear. The damage to Christa's right arm caused her to drop her weapon but not before her shot had taken out Kasim.

With the laser set to narrow beam, the entire force of the energy struck Kasim in the center of his chest, passing completely through his body at one point as the laser beam swept across his chest for a dozen centimeters. His heart was so severely damaged that it was barely pumping. Although a laser pistol seared flesh closed as quickly as it opened it, the heart damage meant Kasim had mere minutes left to live. The lattice pistol fell from his hand as his life-force began to give up its impermanent hold on his body.

Christa and Kasim fell to the floor at the same instant, landing within a meter of one another. It was difficult to know who had screamed first, but a cacophony had echoed around the room for several seconds.

Through the two-or-three-second interval while the shooting had taken place, Mikel Arneu had stood transfixed by the door, her weapon still dangling in her hand as if she had forgotten it was there. When the door flew open, it caught Arneu in the back and she dropped the pistol, but as Madu burst into the room Arneu suddenly regained her wits and stepped back while extending a foot to trip the director.

Madu fell face forward towards the floor and Arneu ducked out the door. The Director wound up on the floor looking at Christa and Kasim, both of whom still had their eyes open. There was no blood by Kasim, but it was pooling up considerably by Christa. Madu jumped up and ran out the door.

With what must have been his final breath, Kasim managed to say to Christa, "I gave you life— and now I've taken it back. Fitting, don’t you think?"

Christa heard the words, but was unable to respond. She was going into shock and her last image was of Kasim's dead body as everything turned black.

Doctor Johannes burst into Christa's room with Nurse Gibson right behind him and Madu behind her. As soon as Johannes saw the amount of blood, he stopped and turned, putting a hand up to Madu.

"Please wait outside," Johannes said to Madu. "We need room to work." As she stepped back out, he closed the door.

Johannes immediately knelt next to Christa and put his hand on her neck. "Good Lord, no pulse at all. She probably bled out."

"This one is dead as well," Nurse Gibson said.

Standing up, Johannes said, "Okay, let's get this straight. Commander Carver is seriously injured, but she's not dead."

"But you said she has no pulse. That means she's dead."

"She's NOT dead. Do you understand?"

"Uh, yes, Doctor. But why isn't she dead if she has no pulse and isn't breathing?"

"Help me bandage her wounds," he said as he knelt next to Christa and began wrapping gauze around her head. "The reason is not simple. First, I just heard she's been named as Commander of the Dakistee Outpost. She's in charge of the entire planet. We don’t want people to think it's this easy to assassinate the top person here. Second, the Carver women have some kind of unique physiology that lets them heal from wounds that would kill anyone else. Perhaps something can still be done for her. But mainly, I don't want to be the one whose signature is on the death certificate, so I'm not ready to pronounce her dead. Admiral Holt should be the one to release any information like that."