Skye Object 3270a (12 page)

F
or two days Skye hardly knew what was going on around her. A terrible fever trapped her in a world halfway between waking and sleep, where nasty dreams replayed over and over again. Now and then she wakened briefly, to find herself sweating and tossing on her sleeping pad beside the transparent wall. The lights were kept low. She found the semi-darkness a comfort as she lay naked beneath a thin sheet. She tried not to look overhead, where a swarm of robotic arms hovered like some gigantic spider, ever ready to measure her temperature, or sample her blood, or puncture her skin with an intravenous needle, or drain away her body's wastes.

Instead, she looked for Yulyssa, and Yulyssa was always there, lying on her side just beyond the transparent wall, her head propped on her hand, her dark eyes brooding, never sleeping. When she saw that Skye was awake, she would smile just a little, and touch her fingers to the barrier, so that Skye knew she would touch her face if she could. Skye longed for that touch. She thought she would die without it. She wanted it so badly that finally she found the strength to raise her own hand and hold it for a few seconds against Yulyssa's with only the barrier between them.

After that she slept a real sleep for the first time in two days, and when she awoke, she felt as if her body once again belonged to her. “Feeling better?” Yulyssa asked.

Skye smiled. “Yes.” Then she added, “A war's been fought inside me, hasn't it? It feels that way.”

“And the Chenzeme lost,” Yulyssa said. Her eyes gleamed with joy. “Compassion plague has been defeated.”

Skye had a fast, efficient metabolism, finely sculpted through many generations of genetic manipulation. Now that the Chenzeme plague was gone from her system, her body began to rapidly heal. After another long sleep she was able to get to her feet. She walked on wobbly legs to use the toilet while Ord followed nervously behind her. After that she sat on the sofa and brushed her short hair. It felt strangely heavy and oily.

“Some of your Makers have died off or gone dormant,” Yulyssa explained. “They're not around to keep you clean.”

Yulyssa spoke to the monkey house staff and a bath was sent to Skye's room. It rose up through the floor. Steam curled from the scented, slightly pink water.

“It's a nutrient bath,” Yulyssa explained. “It will reinfect you with the Makers that you've lost.”

Skye eased herself into the hot water and sighed in delight. Afterwards she dressed, then ate a small meal of soup and crackers. It was the first food she'd had in her stomach in days. It made her sleepy. She lay down on the sofa, her knees pulled up to her chest, stroking Ord's smooth tentacle as it curled around her fingers.

“Skye?”

“Mmm?”

“You have some visitors outside who would love to say hello.”

“Really?” She sat up, looking at the doorway beyond Yulyssa. A moment later, Zia, Buyu, and Devi—with Jem balanced on his shoulder—crowded inside. Zia started to crack a joke, then her gaze fixed on Skye. Her grin faded. “Oh,
Skye
,” she breathed.

“What?”

“I . . . it's just that I . . .”

“What?” Skye said, sitting up straighter. “Am I ugly?”

“Yes! Ado, I never saw anyone look so . . .
fleshless
before. It's like there's nothing between your bones and your skin. Your face, it's . . . like a skull. Look at your arms! There's nothing there.”

Devi and Buyu looked just as shocked.
None of us has ever seen a person who
'
s been sick,
Skye realized. She looked at her hands, her arms, her ankles. They
were
just bones draped in skin. It was as if her muscles and the thin, protective layer of fat that had wrapped her body had been melted away in the microscopic war that had raged inside her.

She felt suddenly ashamed. Especially with Devi and Buyu there. She must look hideous. Why hadn't Yulyssa told her? Skye looked for her, to demand an explanation, but for the first time in two days she did not see Yulyssa beyond the barrier. She must have slipped out to give Skye a few private minutes with her friends.

Her flash of temper faded. She flexed her hands, amazed that such bony things could still move.

“Hey,” Devi said. “Just eat like Buyu for a day or two, and you'll be as good as new.” His shock had passed. His smile was genuine.

“Sooth,” Buyu said. “And maybe this time we'll really get Chef Carlisle.”

Skye felt her shame seep away. She got up from the sofa, shuffled over to the barrier, then sat down heavily on the sleeping pad. Jem jumped off Devi's shoulder and nuzzled the transparent wall, trying to find a way into her lap. “Are you all okay?” she asked.

“We had some puzzle pieces in our blood,” Devi said, crouching beside Jem and stroking the little dokey's back. “Ord figured it wrong. You were just becoming contagious, there in the council chamber. Almost everyone in the chamber was touched with it, but with us it was just getting started, so it was easy for the doctors to snip it out.”

Skye could not think what to say to this shocking news. Ord had figured it wrong? Then she might have poisoned the whole city. She lay back against the pad and stared up at the ceiling. “I— I'm so sorry. I thought there was time. I—”

“You couldn't have known,” Yulyssa said firmly. Skye turned her head, to find her standing just inside the doorway, her dark eyes cautious as she studied Skye. “Ord was right. Compassion should never have matured that quickly. The doctors are guessing something on the planet hurried its development. Deception Well is like that. You never know how the governors will react.”

Skye looked away, as tears welled in her eyes. She had come so close,
so close
to causing a horrible disaster. The city might have died.

“Hey,” Devi said. “It's not that bad. Even if you hadn't brought a cure back with you, Compassion would never have spread. We would have just gone into cold storage, and hibernated, while the monkey house docs worked up a counteragent. And if that didn't work, we would just grow our bodies over again.”

“That's right,” Yulyssa said. “The only way you could have harmed anyone was by denying you were sick, and giving the infection a chance to become widespread.”

Skye didn't want to think about that. She wiped her eyes and turned to Buyu. “They kicked you out of the explorer corps, didn't they?”

Buyu could not quite meet her gaze as he shrugged. “They didn't have much choice.”

“I'm sorry,” Skye whispered.

Buyu's brows lowered in a fierce scowl. “Stop saying that, okay? We did what we did for a reason. I'd do it again.”

“It was worth it,” Zia agreed, “because we found a cure for Compassion.”

Skye looked from Buyu, to Devi, to Zia, feeling a sudden bright hope stir under her heart. Zia was right. They had found a cure. “Then city authority is going to look for the lifeboats?”

The mood of her friends suddenly dimmed. Zia looked at her hands. Buyu frowned. Devi's eyes hardened in anger. “No,” he said. “City authority is not going to look.”

“But why not?”

“The same old reasoning,” Zia said. “They say if there were other lifeboats, they would have shown up by now.”

“And they say they've done surveys before,” Buyu added.

“Not with radar,” Devi growled. “They won't look with radar.”

“But why not?” Skye asked, truly mystified.

Yulyssa stepped forward. “Because they're afraid. Strangers bring new ways, new diseases, new challenges. The city has been at peace now for as long as any of you can remember, but it hasn't always been that way.”

Skye shook her head. “But if they're out there, they're only children. They need us.”

Yulyssa nodded. “We still have to convince the council of that.”

S
kye ate. Never in her life had she felt so constantly hungry. Never before had she consumed so much food. Her body used the calories for repairing and rebuilding her tissues. Day by day she gradually regained the weight she had lost, until once again she was sleek with muscle overlaid by a thin and healthy cushion of fat.

Only then did the doctors consent to let her out of the monkey house.

It was late at night, past midnight when she left. Skye couldn't understand why the docs had picked such an hour.

Yulyssa met her. There was no one else around. A transit car brought them home. All was quiet until they entered the courtyard of their apartment building, then they were set upon by a flock of camera bees. The buzzing machines swooped out from behind the shrubbery that flanked the building's entrance, startling Skye so badly she hissed and ducked away.

Yulyssa stood her ground. She glared at the camera bees, warning their operators in a voice that was deadly cold, “Leave now. We have nothing to say.”

City law required they obey, or face harassment charges. The bees retreated, but they did not really leave. Skye could hear them buzzing within the shrubbery. “They want to talk to me, don't they?” she asked softly.

“Tomorrow,” Yulyssa said, and they went inside.

In the morning the bees were gone, but only because Yulyssa had negotiated a media contract that required Skye to answer questions at an open press conference. The mediots were satisfied.

Siva Hand was not.

As Skye stepped outside, she was startled to discover Devi's mother waiting in the courtyard. Devi himself was not in sight.

Siva was dressed formally, with wide, stiff sleeves and deeply pleated pants. She stood with her back very straight. On her face was a look of impatient anger. One glance at Siva, and Skye felt as if she were late for a forgotten appointment. Nervously, she stroked Ord's tentacle as it curled gently around her neck.

The little robot had chosen to ride on her shoulder this morning. Now it murmured in her ear, “Scary lady, Skye. Go back. Go home. Yulyssa will help, yes? Please Skye?”

“Hush, Ord.” Skye had to make this press conference. It would be her last good chance to persuade the city that she was not just some reckless kid. She couldn't turn back because Siva Hand stood in her way.

Of course she did not want a fight. So she decided to play dumb.

“M. Hand,” she said, nodding her head in polite greeting. “You must have come to see Yulyssa. Do go on up. I know she'd love to receive you.” And with that she tried to hurry past this woman who had lost her first family to a Chenzeme assault centuries before.

Something in Siva's icy voice made her stop. “Young lady, you know very well it's you I've come to see.” This was not the same voice Siva had used that night Skye first met Devi. Then, Siva had seemed sweetly endearing. Now . . .

In her voice, Devi's mother carried the gravity of all the sad centuries she had been alive. Skye could not run from that voice anymore than she could have run from Yulyssa.

Siva watched her with eyes that were still and cold. “I've come to ask: Do you feel you have already caused enough pain for my family? Or do you plan still more? It has been only a few days since you forced yourself into my son's life, and yet his life is in ruins. Do you have some influence, beyond the influence of a wild little girl? Do have some special hatred for me? Have I somehow offended you, that you must steal away and ruin what I love most?”

Skye listened to this tirade, too stunned to interrupt. When she finally found her voice she spoke softly—but she could not have held back the words if they cost her life. “He's not your toy.” Her anger was a hot red glow at the base of her mind, forcing her to speak. “He's not your special project.”

“Oh sooth,” Siva answered. “Divine is your project, isn't he? Under your guidance he has left his home and his studies. He has risked his life and endangered the city—”

“It's not like that! I didn't make him go—”

“Now you will tell me it was his idea.”

“It doesn't matter whose idea it was!”

“I want you to stay away from him.”

“Do you think that would make him come home to you?”

Siva flinched, as if Skye had slapped her. “You are a cruel child.”

“Not as cruel as you! You cloned him from the son you lost, and all his life, all you've done is force him to
be
that son. But that's not who he is! That's not him!”

As soon as the words were out, she knew she'd said too much, but it was too late to take anything back. She looked at Siva's bloodless face and stuttered, “I- I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that.”

It was then she noticed Devi. He had come into the courtyard with Buyu. They must have come to meet her. Clearly, Devi had heard what she'd just said. He stood frozen beside Buyu, slack-jawed with surprise.

Siva turned to follow Skye's gaze, and smiled.

For several seconds no one spoke. Then Devi remembered to close his mouth. He swallowed hard. Skye could actually see the anger flowing into his expression, displacing shock. “You had no right to say that,” he told her, his voice soft and husky, like a growl. “You don't know anything about me. You don't know anything about my mother.”

“Hey Dev,” Buyu said, putting a massive hand on Devi's shoulder. “She didn't mean—”

Devi shrugged away from Buyu's touch and turned, leaving the courtyard at a swift walk that soon turned into a run. Siva's gaze settled once more on Skye. Pinned to her face was a small but triumphant smile.

Skye looked away. She felt so ashamed. She'd betrayed Devi. She wasn't supposed to know what she knew, and she certainly wasn't supposed to say it. But the words had popped out of her mouth and there was no way now to grab them back.

She wanted to run away. She wanted to hide. She wanted to lock herself in her room and cry. But the press conference would start in half an hour and she had to be there. It might be her last chance to persuade the city to listen. As if she could persuade anybody of anything.

“Hey,” Buyu said. “You okay?”

It startled her to find him so close. He had bent down to look into her eyes. Siva Hand was gone.

Skye smiled weakly. “I have a big mouth, don't I?”

Buyu wisely chose not to answer that. “Give Dev some time to cool off.” He hesitated. Then, “What did you mean about him being a clone?”

“It was something Yulyssa told me. I wasn't supposed to know. I shouldn't have said it. I should have let Devi tell me, in his own time.”

But there was no way now to take it back.