The Prometheus Project Part 25

I had wondered if Nafayum was going to make me Black or Asian or something. She hadn't, but the face in the mirror didn't seem to fit any familiar ethnic category. I'd always been a square-faced, blunt-nosed type. Nafayum and her swarms of microscopic little helpers had made my cheekbones grow higher, while narrowing and lengthening the jaw, and producing a snoot Caesar wouldn't have been ashamed of.

To my relief, she'd left my hair as thick as ever, but instead of being wavy and medium brown it was

now straight and brown-black. My complexion was likewise darker, and my hazel eyes had turned deep brown. A dark stubble shadowed my lower face; evidently I'd been out of stasis long enough for my beard to resume growing, in its new color.

"Your fingerprints, retinal pattern and blood type are also changed," Khorat informed me. "Nafayum

was quite proud of her work."

I managed to sit up and swing my legs over the side of the bed. Very carefully, I stood up. There seemed something very slightly wrong with the angle at which I was seeing Khorat. I later learned that Nafayum, by some overall skeletal lengthening and narrowing, had added a little over an inch to my height, making me almost six feet three.

I stood up, and almost fell back onto the bed as a dizzy spell took me. I felt stiff and awkward as h.e.l.l,

but as soon as my head stopped spinning I found I could walk.

"Chloe . . . ?" I queried. My voice sounded a little odd to me: not quite as deep, and with a slight nasal quality.

"The metamorphosis was likewise a success in her case, and she is also awake. Would you like to see

her?"

"Very much." Cautiously, I stepped through the hatch into the pa.s.sageway. The next hatch down opened just as I was turning toward it. A figure emerged.

What's another woman doing here? I thought stupidly, before realization hit.Chloe's hair had been lightened to a tawny blond. The vivid blue eyes that were probably her most distinctive feature were now a less memorable gray-green, and they flanked a snub nose. Her cheekbones, in contrast to mine, had been lowered to make her face oval rather than heart-shaped. Her overall bodily type, like mine, seemed to have been very slightly lengthened and narrowed. (Could this have reflected an esthetic bias of the low-gravity-dwelling Ekhemasu, who probably saw all humans as disproportionately stocky?) Then she walked toward me and smiled . . . and I wondered if maybe Nafayum was kidding herself

about our parents not recognizing us. The Chloe I knew was still in there-the Chloe that had been moving and gesturing and smiling in certain ways for a lifetime. But then, I knew this was Chloe, so I knew what to look for. Someone who didn't-Renata Novak, say-would never dream it was she.

I wondered if some such ghost of me still lived inside the character I'd seen in the mirror. I hoped so.

"Bob!" she greeted, "You look . . ." As she spoke, and looked up into my face, her smile faded into a

frown of puzzlement. Then her mouth fell open in a gasp, her eyes widened, and the perplexity in her face changed to something indistinguishable from horror."Hey, Chloe, I know I need a shave, but . . . Chloe? Chloe?"In fiction, women are always fainting. I'd never found that particularly believable, never having seen one actually do it. So I was unprepared when Chloe's legs collapsed under her. I managed to catch her before

she hit the deck.

"Khorat!" I yelled as I picked her up and carried her into her cabin. I'd barely laid her on the bed when Khorat arrived with an Ekhemasu who I a.s.sumed was a medic. The latter proceeded to gingerly examine a member of an unfamiliar species.

"It is unfortunate that Nafayum is no longer available for consultation," Khorat remarked as we sat in his

tiny-on Ekhemasu standards-office. "But given the unaccustomed strains and stimuli to which her

body has been subjected, some chemical imbalances are hardly surprising."

"Yeah, that's probably it," I said, taking a fortifying swallow of the sort-of-gin. "I was feeling pretty woozy myself." But neither that line of reasoning nor the booze could make me forget the stricken look I'd seen on Chloe's new face.

The hatch beeped for admission, and the obviously relieved medic entered. "She is conscious," he reported, "and apparently suffering from no ill effects. I have told her to rest for a time."

"Thanks, Doc. Can I see her?" I glanced sideways at Khorat. "Alone?"

"Yes, although she should not be fatigued."

I hastened to the sick bay, where human-sized bedding had been improvised. Chloe was lying on her back with her eyes closed, but she didn't look asleep. Instead, she looking like she was thinking with a veritable fury of concentration.

"Hi," I said tentatively. "How are you feeling?"

Chloe's eyes snapped open, and for an instant the stunned look reappeared. But only for an instant, for she clamped a neutral expression down like a steel shutter.

"Oh, hi, Bob," she said in a voice as controlled as her features. "I'm fine, just tired."

I took Chloe's hands. To my relief, she didn't jerk them away. "Chloe, please tell me what's the matter."

She took a deep breath, and a smile trembled to life on lips that weren't quite as full as they had been.

"Nothing's wrong, Bob. Nothing. I'm just not feeling myself yet, and it was disorienting, and . . . Bob, could you let me rest for a while?"

"Oh sure. Sure. Best thing for you." I hastened to leave her alone.

A few hours later, she emerged from the sick bay, to all appearances calm and cheerful. And so she remained for the next couple of Earth days, as the Ekhemasu completed their preparations for departure.

But it wasn't the same. From time to time, I caught her staring at me in a way she never had before. I told myself she was just intrigued by my new face. But I knew there was more to it than that, although I couldn't imagine what. And despite the bewildered hurt I felt, I didn't dare force the issue by demanding answers.

There was only one thing of which I was reasonably certain: behind her consciously maintained barrier of superficial normalcy, she was still thinking very, very hard.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

The dry-planet-dwelling Ekhemasu had no nautical tradition of giving ships names. Not being a swabby, I was untroubled by any superst.i.tions about bad luck arising from the lack.

A fat lot I knew.

At any rate, our unnamed ship naturally followed the day/night cycle of Khemava. So once again Chloe and I had to establish our own schedule, which had nothing to do with that of our hosts. At least we could set the lights in our cabins so as to simulate the twenty-four-hour period for which we had evolved. This was easier on our metabolisms, but didn't always facilitate interaction with Khorat.

For example, we woke up one morning (as defined by us) to discover that we had slept through the

ship's departure from the Khemava system.

"We saw no point in awakening you," Khorat explained when we sought him out in the observation lounge. The semicircular screen was set for view-aft, and the stars were streaming past us and receding at the impossible rate we remembered from our voyage to Antyova. For all the rock-steady artificial gravity, I had to fight a momentary impulse to grab on to something.

"But why the rush?" Chloe asked. "I didn't think we were scheduled for departure for another twenty-

four hours at least. What happened?"Khorat turned to face us, and his aspect quieted us. He seemed shaken to the core. "Circ.u.mstances have altered. A ship arrived at Khemava bearing new information from our Tonkuztra sources in the Osak gevroth, who in turn had obtained it through their infiltration of their Tosava rivals." The old Ekhemar trailed to a halt, and I realized it wasn't just a pause for dramatic effect. He was, quite simply preoccupied . . . and, I began to suspect, even more shaken than I'd thought.

"And . . . ?" I prompted.

Khorat pulled himself together. "It seems we badly underestimated Novak and her confederates. We thought they would still be in the organizational stage. In fact, their time ship is approaching readiness, sooner than we ever dreamed possible. They must have begun preparing the ship itself, in all respects

other than the actual time-displacement apparatus, in antic.i.p.ation of success in obtaining that apparatus.

It is the kind of total commitment possible only to the true fanatic."

"So," I demanded, "where does this leave us?"

"Our strategy of infiltration, using the two of you, is almost certainly no longer viable. Novak must

already have her personnel in place. So, however much it runs counter to our natural instincts, we will probably have to resort to brute force methods and disable Novak's ship before it commences its temporal displacement."

Chloe's newly gray-green eyes were round. "Are you saying that this ship is armed?" I didn't feel as shocked as she sounded-blame it on my background-but even I could guess at the magnitude of the illegality involved.

"Not heavily armed," Khorat said hastily. "That would be quite impossible for a ship this size. The

weapons of s.p.a.ce warfare are, of necessity, ma.s.sive-or so I'm told. It isn't exactly my subject."

"Yeah," I nodded. The Project had learned something about the way war was waged among the stars.

"That's why capital ships are generally designed as close as they can get to the fifty-thousand-ton upper

limit imposed by the interstellar drive. Laser weapons, no matter how advanced, can't get away from one hard fact: all other things being equal, the greater the diameter of the focusing optics, the greater the effective range. And as for missiles, field drives-even ones designed to burn themselves out in a single suicide run-can be miniaturized by only so much. So missiles that can catch faster-than-light ships have to be big, which means a ship has to be d.a.m.ned big to carry a useful number of them."

"You put me to shame with your knowledge of these matters," said Khorat graciously. "You will understand, then, why we were only able to equip this ship with a single small laser weapon-not intended for an antishipping role at all, but rather for short-range defense. Nevertheless, within its limited range it should be capable of inflicting disabling damage on a s.p.a.ce vessel."

"Unless that vessel blows us into dust bunnies first," I commented gloomily.

"Remember, Novak will not have a purpose-built warship either. In fact, our a.s.sessment is that it won't