Майкл Салливан - Deep Magic. Fourth Collection

The air lock closed.

“What was that! We need that antivirus!”

Esther’s right hand began to shake violently. She clutched it harder with her left, but Webb noticed the movement. His face paled.

“I had my orders.”

“Orders given by a chancellor protected and quarantined. Orders given by a woman who hasn’t lost what I’ve lost!”

Fletcher’s fist flew. Esther blocked his hand with her arm, her military training kicking in. Fletcher startled at her quickness and stepped back. She hid her shaking hand behind her back.

“Should I call guards to escort you back to your quarters?”

Her host would have. She would have locked him in his quarters, then plotted his character assassination.

But Esther wasn’t her host.

“I’m captain of this ship and can go where I please,” he said.

“You will no longer join me on Taara Makaan.”

“Not that it matters.” The door to the air lock swished open, and Fletcher stormed away. “You won’t sign that treaty anyway!”

Fletcher turned the corner out of sight.

“Esther would’ve handled it differently,” Webb said, his voice trembling.

“I can’t afford a mutiny,” Esther said. “Arresting the captain—”

“Is what she would have done.”

She was wrong.

But out loud, Esther said, “I have to call the chancellor.”

She marched as quickly as dignity would allow back to her room.

“Tiberius!” Esther stepped up to his chair, her feet toe-to-toe with his. “How do you explain this?”

She held her hand, violently shaking, before his crooked nose.

“Not possible,” he whispered.

He pressed her hand firmly between both of his and closed his eyes. His warmth reassured her, though she couldn’t explain why. She was nothing more than a successful experiment to him, the next step on his path to scientific fame.

“The DNA I used was preserved from a time before her virus was active. It should have been latent,” he said. “I checked and rechecked. No.” He released Esther’s hand and spun in his chair. “This is something else; it must be.”

He pointed his gnarled finger at the scanner, and Esther stood on its pad. His fingers danced a reggae over the glowing controls. A light flashed, and Esther blinked the spots from her eyes.

“Still latent,” he said and fell back in his chair.

“Still latent? Then how do you explain this?”

Both her hands were shaking now, signs that the virus was spreading.

“I can’t. The scan shows the latent virus.” His thickset eyelids narrowed. “Are you nervous for any reason?”

“Nervous? You think this is in my head? Don’t be preposterous.”

“It’s a logical explanation.”

Knock, knock, knock.

Esther turned to the door. “In a moment.” To Tiberius. “You’ve missed something.”

The doctor shook his bald head and shuffled into the hospital through the hidden door. Esther pushed a button on her desk. The floor swallowed the scanner pad, and the doctor’s controls sank into her desk. No visitor would know her secret.

Esther sat straight-backed in her cedar chair and clasped her shaking hands in her lap.

“Enter.”

Her host’s daughter, Naomi, barged in.

“You didn’t sign the treaty?”

“Fletcher told you. How convenient.”

“It doesn’t matter who told me.” Naomi threw her hands out. “Our lives depend on that antivirus. Don’t you care about your planet? Your own daughter?”

Her features weren’t as Esther remembered them, or more precisely, as her host had. In her host’s memory, Naomi had a larger nose, rounder face, crooked teeth. The nose was an exaggeration of Naomi’s father’s. Probably because her host hated the ex-husband for daring to leave. But the rounder face and crooked teeth were from the daughter’s past when she was thirteen.

No thirteen-year-old stood before Esther now. Naomi had grown into a twenty-four-year-old young woman, angry and stunning, and her host had missed it completely.

“Take a seat.” Esther motioned to the chair and a half. “We need to talk.”

Naomi half turned toward the door then back to Esther. Her lips mouthed Esther’s words. She walked to the chair and studied Esther’s face.

“You want me to stay?”

“Obviously.”

“How sick were you?”

“I had time to think; that’s all you need to know.”

Naomi perched on the edge of the cushion. Esther caught even more changes. Naomi’s hips strained her pants. Her hair grew thicker and more lustrous than before. And her style had changed. Instead of a fitted button-down top, she wore a peasant-style shirt that flowed around her curves and didn’t hug her slender waist.

Esther wasn’t the only one with secrets.

“The chancellor insists that Mayapuri is not to be surrendered as part of the deal,” Esther said.

Naomi cocked her head at Esther. She was trying to guess Esther’s next move. Her host wouldn’t have let the conversation go this far.

“She’s willing to let more of her own citizens die to keep Mayapuri?”

Naomi inched back on her seat to get comfortable. For some reason, Esther still wanted this conversation to continue.

“Yes,” she said, studying the woman before her.

“But you’re the one signing the treaty.”

“To defy my superiors would be suicide, literally.”

Naomi’s face hardened in much the way Esther’s would have. Why didn’t Esther’s host have any memory of her daughter’s resemblance to herself? Had she pushed her that far out of her mind?

“Our superiors still answer to the people,” Naomi said. “They still have a vote.”

Excellent point.

“And the people want the treaty more than they want Mayapuri,” Esther said.

“So, give them what they want; they’ll protect you.”

Esther laughed at that. It startled both Naomi and herself. Try as she might, Esther couldn’t remember what her own laugh had sounded like.

“The people won’t protect me,” Esther said. “They’ll celebrate me for a few weeks, maybe a year, then move on with their new lives. But the chancellor, she has a long memory.”

Naomi leaned forward, fully invested in their little game now. “Then don’t let the chancellor see your hand in it.”

“But I sign the treaty.” Esther leaned in too.

Her hands started to shake, and Naomi’s eyes flicked down. She leapt from her chair.

“You’re still sick.”

“Not from the virus.”

“Then what?”

Naomi fled to the door. Her right hand covered her stomach while her left touched the door, her escape.

“I haven’t figured it out.”

“An assassination attempt? You’ve made a lot of enemies.”

“Assassination . . .”

Assassin bots! The doctor didn’t deactivate them all!

It fit. The only ones who could have infected Esther in her short life were Tiberius, Webb, and Fletcher. It would have been easiest for the doctor. Simply leave some assassin bots active. He could even program them to imitate the shakes virus.

Naomi opened her mouth to say something, but her gaze stayed locked on Esther’s hands.

“I can’t stay.”

“Go.”

Naomi stepped into the hallway, then turned back. “Whatever you decide—”

“I’ll let you know.”

The door closed.

Esther narrowed her eyes at the hidden door and considered the wrinkled old man behind it. Her host would have killed the doctor first, then called the chancellor.

But Tiberius wasn’t going anywhere, and for some reason Esther couldn’t explain, she needed to save Naomi. She pulled out the desk chair and sat with shoulders lowered and chin high. She hid her shaking hands under the desk.