Strangers. Part 5

The others talked softly while Annia worked broken bone fragments into place and sealed them. She set the last chip. She had no patches, so she used surgical adhesive on the larger blood vessels cut by the sharp edges of broken bone. The rest would heal of its own accord. She arched her back and stretched.

The man's friends -- they referred to themselves as some kind of local militia -- stirred. Dess pushed herself up from her seat by the wall. "Are you done?"

"Is there something in the store room for bruises or concussion?"

Dess shrugged. "If Cho'en and Maycee are available, they treat that sort of thing. Without them, we just make do with what we can afford."

Annia realized this was the clinic Maycee had told her about: Cho'en's clinic. "Then I can't do anything more for him."

Dess took her elbow. "We'll watch him tonight. Mr. Bracxs and I can walk you home. Where do you live?"

Annia felt herself flushing. "You know Maycee and Cho'en Charmmes?"

Dess raised her eyebrows at her companion, the soft-spoken giant, Mr. Bracxs. She said to Annia, "You bought the lot next to theirs? Have you known them long? You must know Mr. Hollin, too."

It was not yet dark outside. The sun set late due to Yetfurther's axial tilt, but the light was yellow, and the air was cooling. Annia had spent more time with her patient than she realized. There simply was no quick way to perform that kind of reconstructive surgery. "I just met them."

Dess c.o.c.ked her head. "And you a doctor, too. It's a coincidence. Well you're welcome to Murrayville, Doctor."

Dess and Mr. Braxcs left her in sight of her gate with apologies for not walking her the whole way. It seemed they had to report to someone and wanted to get home before sneakdilly time, but before they parted company, Dess said, "Give our best to Maycee and Cho'en, and any time you need a favor, ask one of the runners -- the kids with the green headbands. They'll get hold of us."

Annia squeezed the wood-and-rope latch of her gate and let herself inside. The k.n.o.b-kneed trees along the water shed cottony pollen carriers on the breeze. Lake Cyrion slopped at its banks and breathed humid water smells into the air. The clones were nowhere in sight.

She tried to walk loudly to the gap in the fence, but the moss underfoot absorbed her footfalls. She cleared her throat. "Is anyone there?"

A saurian head popped from behind the fence. It tilted like a bird's. Slender arms raised a tiny image recorder. The recorder clicked. Cho'en turned in a skirl of bells.

"Wait, Cho'en. Are the clones with you?"

The gaean paused and looked back at Annia with three eyes on one side of her head. The bronze nose dipped. Bells clipped to the thick skin of her face rang.

Annia followed the alien's tail through the gap into the neighboring lot.

Maycee said, "h.e.l.lo, Annia. Guess what Mr. Hollin brought us today. Or rather, he brought it for you, but since you weren't here, we thought you wouldn't mind too much if we started without you." The male clone sat on the rough bench with his back to the table. Maycee sat cross-legged on the table top.

Annia approached the clone slowly. He c.o.c.ked his head as he accessed his crystal. He looked pleased and lost interest in Annia.

Maycee looked up from the datapad on her lap. "Mr. Hollin brought us a crystal writer. I've interfaced it with the miniature writers in their implants. Cho'en has been taking image files all afternoon, and we're uploading them to the implants. We're entering places that should be familiar to them and people that they can trust."

Annia was alarmed. Clone programming was a specialized and touchy discipline. Clones with badly programmed crystals could go catatonic -- if they didn't run amuck. "You should have waited for me."

Cho'en c.o.c.ked her head and rippled the bells up and down her back.

Maycee twitched her head just enough to jingle the filigree of silver wires and bells on each ear. "We would have waited, but Mr. Hollin forgot to announce himself, and the female nearly took his head off before Cho'en knocked her off her feet. Then we could only get the image recorder for a few hours, so we thought we'd better make the best use of it. It took me most of the afternoon to get the interface right. The crystal has to be programmed to give the right information to a specific query."

Annia was furious. "You reprogrammed the crystals?"

Maycee leaned forward eagerly. "His didn't need anything, but hers was erased. I had to read his program, figure out the protocols and write a program for her based loosely on his. Of course, Cho'en is the neurologist, so she checked the interface to make sure I'd got it right. Then I debugged it."

Annia could only stare. She'd never heard of anyone writing a brain/machine interface in less than a half-year, and the adjustments for an individual clone required special equipment. Even brood siblings could have minutely different requirements.

Maycee shrugged. "It's a primitive program. I'll have to make refinements later. You wouldn't know it to look at me, but I am a grade twelve logical systems engineer."

Annia didn't believe her. The flutter sign might explain what a twelfth grade engineer was doing in a place like Murrayville, but grade twelve engineers were confined mostly to a single genetic line of..."You're one of those Charmmeses?"

Maycee's mouth pulled up on one side. "Unfortunately."

It was possible that Maycee had written a viable program after all. The Charmmes family were in an intellectual cla.s.s by themselves. Most of the adults held advanced degrees in at least three fields.

Cho'en dipped her cream-colored crest and flicked her skin to ring the bells clipped to her hide from nose to tail.

Maycee jerked her head. The bells in her ear chimed in harmony with the tiny bells around her eye. She said to Annia, "Cho'en says that you should look over my program before we turn them loose on an unsuspecting universe. Come look at what I've done with the male."

Annia scanned the program in the datapad, paged through the images they'd introduced into the crystals. She tried to look as though she knew what she was seeing, but logical languages meant very little to her. They'd included full length and face views of Mr. Hollin, Maycee, Cho'en and finally Annia. They had views of their two lots and the shared fishing dock from every conceivable angle. Cho'en must have swum out into the lake to get some of the images.

Maycee said, "I wanted to get aerial maps of Murrayville, but I haven't worked out how to integrate their navigational skills and it was more urgent to make them a file of people they shouldn't kill on sight."

The male clone rose from his seat and paced the fence line. He tilted his head to access his crystal and looked pleased with the result. Cho'en heaved herself to her feet and walked toward the lake with a dainty, birdlike gait. The clone spied her and followed at a trot.

Maycee snorted. "He loves the water; he's been paddling around with Cho'en, but he can't swim, and Cho'en can't teach him because he forgets as soon as he dries off. She says traditional gaean methods might alter their brain chemistry enough to allow a few long-term memories to form, but there's nothing short of a domestic virus that will permanently change them."

Mr. Hollin had warned Annia against trying to buy the illegal domestic virus that would alter the clones back to something resembling their untinkered genotype. She said, "Is there anything Cho'en could do? At her clinic, maybe. There's nothing there to build a virus or implant a crystal linkage?"

Maycee shook her head. "She has some surgical equipment, but she's never used it. Gaean medicine...different. She tried today to break down the chemical inhibitors that prevent them from forming long-term memories."

"She's tampering with their neuro-chemistry?"

Maycee fidgeted with the bells on her left ear. "It's hard to explain. I don't suppose you know much about gaean medicine?"

"It's not a regular field of study."

"It wouldn't be. The family has produced its share of doctors and physicists and a couple of rogue metaphysicists," she grinned, "but we wouldn't believe in gaean medicine if we hadn't seen it in action for the last two-hundred years. You'll have to get Cho'en to show you."

The XX came up from the fishing dock soaking wet with a handful of tuberous roots and aquatic gastropods. She dropped the foodstuffs on the ground beside the cooking fire with an irritated expression as if she felt she ought not to lower herself to fetch and carry. The male came up with Cho'en. He carried a bucket of spotted, brown eels that slithered over and around each other despite having been gutted and cleaned on the dock.

Maycee changed the subject. "You know, I wouldn't have thought they'd have so much personality. The male is very gentle and biddable when he doesn't think he should be killing something. He follows me or Cho'en and does whatever he sees us doing. The female is much more ambitious. She paces around the fence all day like a trapped predator."

Annia said, "People often read human motives into clone behavior."

Maycee smiled sidelong. "They're very human." She slipped to the ground and strode to the stone fire pit. "Stay for dinner," she said. She set a hammered metal pot to one side of the cooking fire and adjusted the firewood around it.

Annia hesitated. Rehydrated camp rations tasted bad enough if you couldn't smell stew bubbling in the pot on the other side of the fence.

"Don't be polite. It's tiresome," Maycee said, "and if we share out the cooking, I don't have to eat my own so often."

They ate at the plank table with the cousins' numerous catpils mewling and clicking at their feet. In the middle of the meal, a firm knock at the gate in the outer fence sent the catpils scurrying toward the cousins' shelter. The male clone looked up from his plate, then went back to sc.r.a.ping stew into his mouth with his fingers. The female snapped her head around and rose fluidly to her feet.

The gate opened. A tall man with a stubbled face said, "Sorry to catch you in the middle of your meal, but...flaming asteroids." He slammed the gate while Annia was still trying to shout, "Stop. At rest," with her mouth full of stew.

The XX hit the gate with an astonished expression. She'd been so intent on killing the intruder that she hadn't calculated on the gate closing.

Annia almost choked on a mouthful of half-chewed eel. Her heart was working so fast she could not swallow.

Maycee approached the clone slowly with her hands raised, palms out. "At rest, sweetheart. No enemies," she said. "Come back here." She took the clone by the elbow. The clone followed her.

Maycee said, "Cho'en, get up and fetch the image recorder. General Baldwin, are you still there?"

His voice came from the other side of the fence. "Was she trying to kill me?"

"She's all right now. Come in."

General Baldwin peered around the door and recoiled again as Cho'en thrust the recorder in his face. "Who was that?"

Maycee took the recorder from Cho'en and aimed its data exchange port at the receiver on the crystal writer. She turned the writer toward a point behind the female's ear. "I'm sorry, Baldwin. She didn't know you. I'm putting you in her database now."

Cho'en huffed and lashed her tail. "Coch, sit dowth. Hwee haff saffed such for you."

Annia translated the gaean's slurring speech, Come sit down. We have saved some for you.

Baldwin dropped a shoulder duffel on the deck and looked reproachfully at the gaean. "I'm ent.i.tled to a month of free meals to make up for the year you just scared off my life."

The gaean flicked her crest and served up an extra plate of stew.

Maycee finished with the XX and ran the writer over the XY's head. "They'll recognize you next time, General. Have you met our new neighbor? This is Annia."

General Baldwin had a weathered face with a scar across his neck and jaw that looked like a near miss from a pulse rifle. He touched palms with Annia and hunched over his stew.

"It's Annia I came to see. Dess told me there was a new doctor with surgical experience. Says you did a good job on Mr. Conrad and stood up to one of Solante's lieutenants. Whose clones?" His gaze lingered on the XX. She looked daggers at him, checked her crystal and continued to scowl.

Maycee said, "They're Annia's partners. They live next door."

He grunted. "Menace to the neighborhood." He looked again at the female. "Which reminds me," he said to Maycee, "Solante's people got to Mr. Conrad, and we had to hear about it on the street. Almost didn't catch them in time. I thought you said you'd help us with that."

Maycee snorted. "I'm not a news-fax."

Baldwin's eyes tightened. "Fact remains, we've got to get better information about Solante's movements, and you're the only source we have."

"I can't do what you want me to do."

"You warned us about Ellera Mann's shop being burned."

"It was during that dry windstorm. If it had spread, it would have burned out half of Murrayville. I just don't see anything much smaller than that and then only when it touches me directly. You'd be better off putting an informant in Solante's house."

Baldwin snorted. "I don't have anybody that stupid."

Maycee's eyes lit. "What about your friend Cerise? She'd be perfect."

Baldwin stabbed his plate with a tooth-jarring sc.r.a.pe of metal on ceramic. "You had any more trouble with Solante yourselves?"

Maycee shrugged. "Not since Cho ran off the last bunch."

"They'll be back. If you're not going to declare for us openly, you'd better pay Solante."

Cho'en hissed, "Hwe ton't chay hextortuth."

Annia stared at the cousins. "What extortion? What are you talking about?"

Baldwin eyed her. "Haven't been here long enough for Solante's men to come around to you, have you?"

Maycee said, "Ganymede Solante is the self-styled First Power of Murrayville. He exacts taxes from the other residents and hara.s.ses them if they don't pay."

"And you don't pay?"

Maycee shrugged. "We've had some threats. Some of his people tried to burn us out once, but Cho'en drove them off. It's been quiet for several months."

Baldwin scowled. "You haven't attracted his interest yet, but you will."

Maycee looked unhappy. "We can't get involved, Baldwin."

Cho'en hissed softly and swung her muscular tail.

"Stop it, Cho. It could attract attention. Would you risk that?"

Annia stared down at her stew. The cousins had fallen into a kind of private code that didn't include her or Baldwin.

Baldwin sc.r.a.ped his plate and nodded when Maycee offered him a second helping. "It won't be long before he notices you. He's going to start noticing a lot of things very soon." He glanced at Annia. "What I've said to Maycee and Cho'en/Ka goes for you, too."

"We appreciate your concern," Maycee said with an edge of temper in her voice. "And we'll do what we can to help you. We're always ready to treat injuries, and if I hear anything..." she c.o.c.ked her head. The bells on her ears jingled, and she closed the inner membrane over her left eye.

Cho'en rang her bells briskly.

Maycee shook her head. "It won't come to that, Cho. I'll go back to the family before I'll pay extortion to a one-planet criminal."

Cho'en stalked away from the table waving her tail sinuously in a slither of bells.

The male clone dropped his plate and trotted after the alien.

Baldwin said, "Cho'en/Ka is right. One side of the fence or the other."

Maycee gathered up the used plates, her mouth stiff, and carried them toward the water where they would be sc.r.a.ped clean by the mudrimples which would, in turn, be eaten by the catpils.

Annia sat in awkward silence across from Baldwin. He rubbed his fingertips on his forehead and threw another lingering glance at the female clone who scowled back. "Stubborn ladies," he said at last with a rueful note in his voice. "So you're a doctor. Had much experience with the kind of hurts that happen in a fight?"

"I worked as a clone medic."

He eyed her speculatively as if he were gauging a tool. "Murrayville has never had what you'd properly call a doctor even with Cho'en. What about you? Are you going to pay taxes to Solante?"

"I don't know."