John Adams - Federations

“Doesn’t seem to work for any of them, does it?”

She smiled wryly. “Well, if there are any that work, I wouldn’t see them, would I?”

She took the processing one step further by cleaning the Barrayaran’s clothes and carefully re-dressing him, before bagging him and returning him to the freeze.

“The Barrayarans are all so army-mad,” she explained. “I always like to put them back in their uniforms. They mean so much to them, I’m sure they’re more comfortable with them on.”

Ferrell frowned uneasily. “I still think he ought to be dumped with the rest of the garbage.”

“Not at all,” said the medtech. “Think of all the work he represents on somebody’s part. Nine months of pregnancy, childbirth, two years of diapering, and that’s just the beginning. Tens of thousands of meals, thousands of bedtime stories, years of school. Dozens of teachers. And all that military training, too. A lot of people went into making him.”

She smoothed a strand of the corpse’s hair into place. “That head held the universe, once. He had a good rank for his age,” she added, rechecking her monitor. “Thirty-two. Commander Aristede Vorkalloner. It has a kind of nice ethnic ring. Very Barrayaranish, that name. Vor, too, one of those warrior-class fellows.”

“Homicidal-class loonies. Or worse,” Ferrell said automatically. But his vehemence had lost momentum, somehow.

Boni shrugged. “Well, he’s joined the great democracy now. And he had nice pockets.”

Three full days went by with no further alarms but a rare scattering of mechanical debris. Ferrell began to hope the Barrayaran was the last pickup they would have to make. They were nearing the end of their search pattern. Besides, he thought resentfully, this duty was sabotaging the efficiency of his sleep cycle. But the medtech made a request.

“If you don’t mind, Falco,” she said, “I’d greatly appreciate it if we could run the pattern out just a few extra turns. The original orders are based on this average estimated trajectory speed, you see, and if someone just happened to get a bit of extra kick when the ship split, they could well be beyond it by now.”

Ferrell was less than thrilled, but the prospect of an extra day of piloting had its attractions, and he gave a grudging consent. Her reasoning proved itself; before the day was half done, they turned up another gruesome relic.

“Oh,” muttered Ferrell, when they got a close look. It had been a female officer. Boni reeled her in with enormous tenderness. He didn’t really want to go watch, this time, but the medtech seemed to have come to expect him.

“I—don’t really want to look at a woman blown up,” he tried to excuse himself.

“Mm,” said Tersa. “Is it fair, though, to reject a person just because they’re dead? You wouldn’t have minded her body a bit when she was alive.”

He vented a little macabre laugh. “Equal rights for the dead?”

Her smile twisted. “Why not? Some of my best friends are corpses.”

He snorted.

She grew more serious. “I’d sort of like the company, on this one.” So he took up his usual station by the door.

The medtech laid out the thing that had been a woman upon her table, undressed, inventoried, washed, and straightened it. When she finished, she kissed the dead lips.

“Oh, God,” cried Ferrell, shocked and nauseated. “You are crazy! You’re a damn, damn necrophiliac! A lesbian necrophiliac, at that!” He turned to go.

“Is that what it looks like, to you?” Her voice was soft, and still unoffended. It stopped him, and he looked over his shoulder. She was looking at him as gently as if he had been one of her precious corpses. “What a strange world you must live in, inside your head.”

She opened a suitcase, and shook out a dress, fine underwear, and a pair of white embroidered slippers. A wedding dress, Ferrell realized. This woman was a bona fide psychopath …

She dressed the corpse and arranged its soft dark hair with great delicacy, before bagging it.

“I believe I shall place her next to that nice tall Barrayaran,” she said. “I think they would have liked each other very well, if they could have met in another place and time. And Lieutenant Deleo was married, after all.”

She completed the label. Ferrell’s battered mind was sending him little subliminal messages; he struggled to overcome his shock and bemusement, and pay attention. It tumbled into the open day of his consciousness with a start.

She had not run an identification check on this one.

Out the door, he told himself, is the way you want to walk. I guarantee it . Instead, timorously, he went over to the corpse and checked its label. Ensign Sylva Boni, it said. Age twenty . His own age…

He was trembling, as if with cold. It was cold, in that room. Tersa Boni finished packing up the suitcase, and turned back with the float pallet.

“Daughter?” he asked. It was all he could ask.

She pursed her lips and nodded.

“It’s—a helluva coincidence.”

“No coincidence at all. I asked for this sector.”

“Oh.” He swallowed, turned away, turned back, face flaming. “I’m sorry I said—”

She smiled her slow sad smile. “Never mind.”

They found yet one more bit of mechanical debris, so agreed to run another cycle of the search spiral, to be sure that all possible trajectories had been outdistanced. And yes, they found another; a nasty one, spinning fiercely, guts split open from some great blow and hanging out in a frozen cascade.

The acolyte of death did her dirty work without once so much as wrinkling her nose. When it came to the washing, the least technical of the tasks, Ferrell said suddenly, “May I help?”

“Certainly,” said the medtech, moving aside. “An honor is not diminished for being shared.”

And so he did, as shy as an apprentice saint washing his first leper.

“Don’t be afraid,” she said. “The dead cannot hurt you. They give you no pain, except that of seeing your own death in their faces. And one can face that, I find.”

Yes, he thought, the good face pain. But the great—they embrace it.

Harry Turtledove—who is often referred to as the “master of alternate history”—is the Hugo Award-winning author of more than eighty novels and a hundred short stories. His most recent novels are The Man With the Iron Heart , After the Downfall , and Give Me Back My Legions! In addition to his SF, fantasy, and alternate history works, he’s also published several straight historical novels under the name H. N. Turteltaub. Turtledove obtained a Ph.D. in Byzantine history from UCLA in 1977.

Given the seriousness of much of Turtledove’s work, it might surprise people what a great sense of humor he has. In his career, he’s written several humorous works, such as this one, which explores the adventures of a space cadet, who happens to be a hamster and the galaxy’s last, best hope. Warning: It contains fowl language. Er, actually, it contains rodent language. What I mean to say is, it’s full of puns. But it’s funny anyway, I promise. If you disagree, I give you permission to call it grimpting.

When thieves paralyzed the people—well, the saurian humanoids—inside the palace on the main continent of Gould IV and made off with the famous throne room (and the somewhat less famous antechamber), it made a tremendous stir all over the continent.

When pirates paralyzed the people—well, the ammonia/ice blobs—inside the palace on the chief glacier of Amana XI and made off with the magnificent throne room (and the somewhat less magnificent antechamber), it raised a tremendous stink all over the planet.