Mind Over Ship

A JENNY NURSE burst into the room with a crash cart at her heels. She and the cart lifted Zoranna from the shower stall to the procedure gurney. Immediately, the readout showed rapidly degrading vital signs. “I think it’s an allergic reaction to this,” the belinda said, but the assayer found no protein factors in the oil that reacted with Zoranna’s profile. Yet her symptoms were consistent with a severe allergic response.

“I’m going to give you something to stabilize your blood pressure,” the jenny told Zoranna while elevating the head of the gurney. To the cart she said, “She has symptoms of anaphylactic shock but not the signs. I can find no antigen; there are no elevated blood histamine levels. Suggestions.”

The cart constructed a treatment tree on her monitor, and as the nurse prepared to execute it, the mentar standing next to the belinda flickered for a moment. Then he said, “Could it be psychosomatic? I’m shutting down her implants.”

The nurse watched the monitor. “Yes,” she said after a moment, “that’s working.” A little while later she said, “I’ve never seen implants like those.”

“They’re new,” Nicholas admitted.

“They’re not safe. You should remove them.”

“REMOVE THEM,” ZORANNA said. “Now.” She lay in bed, recovering from the morning’s ordeal. “You put implants into me with no fail-safes? What were you thinking?”

“They have plenty of fail-safes. Someone found a way around them.”

“It sounds like you’re making excuses.”

“I’m not. I’m trying to explain —”

“It sounds like you’re making explanations.”

Nicholas disappeared, and a little while later, an arbeitor rolled into the bedroom bearing a glass of visola and a flask of Orange Flush. That should do the job.

“NICK?” ZORANNA SAID a few hours later. She was sitting behind the desk of her home office. The mentar did not simply appear, as usual, but walked through the door with downcast eyes. Zoranna ignored his display and said, “Tell me the damages.”

“We lost the prime, five mirrors, and three backups. I’m the fourth backup.”

“What do you mean by lost?”

“Raptured. I opened them within minutes of their quarantine, but they were already gone. I had hoped my protocol to be more effective than that, but —”

“The paste is intact?”

“Yes, the personality matrices, memories, paste, all intact, just nobody home.”

In an even voice, Zoranna said, “A prime and eight copies, I’d say that’s a costly protocol.” Staggeringly costly.

“We’ll be able to recycle the paste, and I will study the failure to improve the protocol, but, yes, costly.” In an attempt to lighten the mood, he added, “But we get to keep these lovely souvenirs.” He opened two rows of frames that displayed nine houses, each an architectural marvel, and nine planets, each an idealized Earth.

Zoranna wiped them away. “Who or what was responsible? Jaspersen?”

“I found nothing in the body oil or any of the other botanicals capable of subverting the implants. I’m studying house recordings going back a year. I’m investigating the belinda, her clothes, perfume, recent whereabouts. I’ve done air samples for dust, nust, biochemicals, bots. I’m studying EM logs, long-wave sonograms, and every other means of attack I can think of. So far, no leads.”

“Could it be a failure of the implants themselves?”

“Unlikely. The failure was coordinated.”

“Jaspersen?” she asked again.

“I don’t see how. Unless he hired a clever mentar.”

“Look into it. Find the bastard who did this.” Zoranna closed her eyes and covered her face with her hands. “Does the Warm Puppy know about all this?”

“It knows you had a crisis at home, though I don’t know how it learned of it. I’ve been keeping close tabs on the belinda, jenny, and all their gear. No leaks from them.”

Zoranna was silent for a long while. When she uncovered her face, she looked old. “It’s been fun, Nick, getting to know you in that way, but it has to stop. You want a body, go find one of your own. Mine is strictly off- limits from now on. Are we clear on that?”

“Perfectly.”

Making the Rounds

An hour after the GEP board voted to alter its mission, the International Oship Plankholder Association, representing ninety-nine Oship governing bodies, called an emergency meeting in Singapore. Meewee was invited — more like summoned — to give an accounting of the GEP’s catastrophic action.

Meewee decided to take the long route there and visit several key Oship officials along the way, especially those from ships that were in final preparation for departure, in order to discuss the dire situation with them in person. He felt he owed them that much.

The first stop was the King Jesus Society compound in Costa Rica. Their ship, the ESV King Jesus, had been second on the launch schedule. The welcoming party that met Meewee’s jet on the sweltering jungle tarmac was made up almost entirely of young adults. Because the KJS forbade the use of rejuvenation therapies, and since there were so few actual youngsters in the world, Meewee assumed they must be recent converts still working off their last rejuve. Before taking him to meet with Elder Seeker, these wholesome young people, who seemed to Meewee like throwbacks to an earlier era, gave him a little tour of KJS Town. Behind its jungle facade, the town was as modern as could be found anywhere. Colleges, a teaching hospital, research labs, farms, shops: all were part of the colonization drive. Though the physical plant had doubled in size since Meewee’s first visit thirteen years before, it had the air of a ghost town: most of its residents were already in space living aboard the King Jesus. Of all the Oship cultures, this was perhaps the most disciplined and self-reliant. Elder Seeker was determined to take with them every piece of human knowledge that was not proscribed by the Divine Creator and likewise every non-proscribed skill set necessary to tame and settle a new world.

Elder Seeker Ralfian met Meewee in his screened office/veranda at the back of his imposing house. A young woman served them lemonade. Elder Seeker, only in his sixties, was aging poorly. His gray hair was thin, he stooped a little when he walked, and he had become flabby. But his expression was as generous as ever.

“Come, sit,” he said, leading Meewee by his elbow to a comfortable cane chair, “and tell me all about it.”

As gently but honestly as possible, Meewee recounted the whole dispiriting affair: how Eleanor Starke had for years deflected the capitalistic urges of the board, the sneak attack by Jaspersen and Singh, his own impending removal. Elder Seeker listened attentively and did not interrupt. “With the approval of all the UD agencies involved,” Meewee summed up, “your colonists already aboard the King Jesus will begin evacuation in a few weeks. Fortunately, none of your people are in biostasis, so we don’t have that to deal with.”

Through all of this, Elder Seeker’s affectionate expression never wavered. When Meewee finished speaking, the Elder reached over and literally patted his hand. “Don’t fret, dear Meewee. God’s not done with you just yet. I don’t expect it to come down to evacuating our people. In fact, we’re proceeding as usual with our schedule for sending the rest of them up.”

“You can’t send more up.”

Elder Seeker raised a hand and grinned. “Have I ever told you the story how I started down God’s path?”

Meewee shook his head, though he had heard the elder’s story several times from third-party sources.

“I was your ordinary free-range, voc-tech dropout. I’d rejuvenated a couple of times. I lived in Collinsville,