Radiant

Admiralty abruptly bumped her (at age twenty-six) to lieutenant admiral and made her the navy’s problem-solver-without-portfolio. Nobody knew how she’d won such a promotion, though everyone suspected she’d caught the High Council in some mischief and blackmailed them into making concessions. Certainly, Ramos’s first official act was to conduct a 'policy review' of the Explorer Corps, leading to an overhaul of corps operations and substantial improvements in the treatment of Explorers by other branches of the service. That alone would have made her popular among us 'expendable crew members'… but more important, she carried out her highly visible activities while still looking like an Explorer. As an admiral, Ramos could easily have obtained treatment to remove her florid birthmark; but she’d stayed the way she was, no matter how much it disconcerted 'normal' people.

Was it any wonder Explorers loved her?

I’d admired her as much as anyone else had. But now, as she checked that my wound was closed, I felt a dawning resentment.

Ramos’s history proved she was surrounded by extraordinary karma — which is not some mystical force but the everyday processes whereby seeds sown in the past bear fruit in the present. Karma simply means that the choices you made yesterday affect the options you have today. It’s common sense. Nothing is inevitable or predetermined… yet your actions and the actions of others can sometimes produce a cumulative momentum almost impossible to resist. That’s what karma is: the momentum of cause and effect that drives you forward, occasionally into bottlenecks or booby traps.

Some people have more momentum than others. Some are riding an avalanche. Festina Ramos was clearly one of those avalanche riders; her karma would sweep her from crisis to crisis until her luck or momentum ran out.

And people like me would be caught in the avalanche too.

Here’s what I was thinking as I lay paralyzed, watching Ramos repack the first-aid kit. Why would the Balrog care about an Ugly Screaming Stink-Girl? It wouldn’t. It would care about a high-ranking avalanche rider like Festina Ramos; she could be useful in the Balrog’s plans, whatever they were. And if those plans required a pawn to serve as host for fuzzy red spores, the Balrog would find great amusement in choosing a host who looked like the admiral’s dark twin.

In other words, I’d been picked because my appearance would get a rise out of Festina Ramos.

She and I were almost the same height. We were both strong, lean, and athletic. Her hair was cut much like mine: short and uncomplicated. Our faces weren’t similar if you compared individual features — her green eyes, my brown, her finely cut nose, mine wider and flatter — but anyone looking at Ramos and me would ignore such minor differences. Observers would be transfixed by our disfigured cheeks. Nothing else would matter.

Even Ramos couldn’t help staring. She checked that Tut was sleeping peacefully and shooed away some curious Cashlings by brandishing her pistol; then she came back and knelt by my side. For almost a minute, she did nothing but gaze at my face. If I’d been able to move, I would have told her to stop. It reminded me too much of my mother, who’d gaze at my cheek in sickened fascination when she thought I wouldn’t notice. But at least there was no disgust in Ramos’s expression — I was used to stares of disgust, and the admiral’s eyes were blessedly free of such condemnation. Free of pity too. Whatever Ramos was thinking, she hid it well.

In time, she turned away from my face. That’s when she saw the blood pricks on my feet. 'Oh fuck,' she said — not angrily, just a whisper. 'Are those Balrog bites? Is that why your partner went after you with the knife?'

'Yes.'

When the word came out of my mouth, I was just as surprised as Ramos. For a terrifying moment, I thought I was still paralyzed, and the Balrog was speaking through me as if I were a ventriloquist’s dummy. But somehow I’d regained control of my muscles, with none of the staggering nausea that usually follows a stunner blast. I sat up… spent a moment straightening my chemise, until I was flooded with embarrassment by my ridiculous attempt at modesty… then scrambled to my knees in front of the kneeling Ramos and saluted. 'Explorer Third Class Ma Youn Suu, Admiral.'

We were almost nose to nose… like little girls kneeling together, getting ready to play some game. Ramos swallowed hard and edged away. She didn’t return my salute. 'You, uhh, you did get bitten, didn’t you? That’s why you got shot by… uhh…'

'He calls himself Tut.'

'Appropriate name. Anyway, if you can shrug off a stun-charge that quickly, you’re…'

'Infested. Yes, Admiral.'

She looked at me. The uneasiness on her face slowly softened. 'How do you feel?'

'I don’t feel different, if that’s what you’re asking.'

'That’s not what I’m asking. How do you feel?'

I looked at her. She was an admiral, yes, but only a few years older than I. Not like a prying mother — just a concerned big sister. Or a friend. 'I feel… I don’t know…'

That was the moment it caught up with me. Everything. Not just being in my underwear at the top of a pyramid in the center of an alien city, with two bite marks on my feet and extraterrestrial parasites in my blood. Not just the prospect of becoming like Kaisho Namida, a cripple in a wheelchair, solid moss from the waist down, and a brain so overrun with spores that she spoke of the Balrog like a lover. Not just the realization that I would be changed against my will and could never again trust my own body, thoughts, emotions, perceptions, or desires.

What caught up with me was my life. The whole of it. The isolation of a childhood as Ugly Screaming Stink-Girl. The unfairness of being forced into the Explorer Corps. The loneliness of months on a starship with nothing but a lunatic partner, a collection of amateurish figurines, and a crew of thirty-five people who couldn’t look me in the face but constantly stole sidelong glances.

I should have been somebody else. Not an Explorer, not a virgin, not an alien parasite’s host. I was only nineteen. I should have had a future; I should have had a past; but I had neither.

So I sank to the ground and wept. In anger, sorrow, fear, regret, grief, self-pity, and loneliness.

After a while, I felt Festina Ramos gently stroking my hair. Some time later, she was holding me as I sobbed against her shirt. But when I’d cried myself out, she eased away. She put a handkerchief in my hand; then she stood up and turned her back while I wiped my eyes, blew my nose, mopped my cheek.

I was left holding the handkerchief, wondering if I should give it back to her. It was damp and filthy… but at least my cheek hadn’t bled the way it often did when I fell to pieces.

'I’m sorry, Admiral,' I mumbled.

'Call me Festina,' she said. 'I’m sick of formality… especially with fellow Explorers.'

I didn’t answer. I could easily get past the military convention of addressing people by rank… but I squirmed at the Western rudeness of using no titles at all. Why couldn’t I call her Daw Festina? Or if our shared background as Explorers made us 'sisters in arms,' I could bring myself to call her Ma Festina. But just a plain unadorned Festina? It was like spitting in her face. Still, there was no point explaining proper etiquette to Caucasians. Even if they decided to respect my good manners, they always put an ironic tone in their voices as if they were humoring a simpleton.

I would just have to get used to calling her by name alone. Festina. At least it was pronounceable, unlike many Western names.

'So that’s over,' Admiral Ramos — Festina — said in a light voice. 'Now we set emotion aside and get busy.'

'Busy doing what?'

'Immediate practical things. When life goes to shit, do immediate practical things. Like head for a starbase hospital.'

'They won’t be able to help me.'

She gazed down at me with her piercing green eyes. 'You’re right. But it doesn’t matter, because I doubt we’ll reach the hospital. You know why?'

I nodded. 'Something will come up. The Balrog intends to use you somehow, and I’ll have to come for the ride. I’m the carrying case for the spores.'

Ramos… Festina… winced. 'Yes. Sorry about that.'

I shrugged. 'If I really am just a carrying case, maybe when this is all over, the Balrog will let me go.'

She gave me a look. 'Do you really believe that?'

'No. But they still haven’t answered the Alvarez question.'

Festina allowed herself a little smile. The Alvarez question had arisen at the Explorer Academy decades ago, first asked by a professor named Ricardo Alvarez. The question was this: Which is more deadly? Despair or false hope? When, for example, you’re possessed by alien spores, is it worse to give up immediately or to let yourself hope some miracle will save you? Both options were undesirable — or, as the Buddha would say, 'unskillful.' Alvarez had wanted some student to resolve the question through statistical research… but generations of Explorers had preferred to let the question go unanswered. Instead, they used it as a private shorthand for I’m not dead yet; let’s leave it at that.

'When I was at the Academy,' Festina said, 'the Alvarez question did have an answer.'

'It still does.' We recited in unison, 'Fuck off, Ricardo!'

The way past despair and false hope is just letting go. It doesn’t improve your odds of survival, but it doesn’t waste mental energy.

Festina grinned. I grinned. Our comm implants buzzed in unison, and we both stopped grinning immediately.

'Ready?' Festina asked.

I nodded. 'Immortality awaits.' Those were the last words an Explorer traditionally spoke before embarking on a mission. No one took the phrase seriously; but if you died, IMMORTALITY AWAITS almost always looked better on a memorial plaque than your real last words… which were far too often 'Oh shit.' ('Going Oh Shit' was an Explorer euphemism for death.)

Our comm implants buzzed again — a general hail on the standard Explorer Corps channel. Festina said, 'I’ll take it,' and clicked her comm to answer.

I didn’t hear much of the conversation. Festina had an old-style Explorer comm — the kind that was embedded in her throat with the audio feed snaking up under the skin to her jaw and making her whole skull resonate. It gave her a noticeable lump on the neck… which I thought would be uncomfortable, though I didn’t know for sure. Thanks to Festina’s changes in the Explorer Corps, my own comm unit was much less intrusive: subcutaneous audio wires in the pinna of each ear; a primary voice pickup that replaced the roof of my mouth; and a secondary subcutaneous pickup running the length of my sternum. (The secondary pickup could be activated remotely. If I ever got knocked out, Pistachio could turn on my chest mike from orbit and track me down by the sound of my heartbeat.)

The new systems were more reliable and practically unnoticeable once you got used to a slight taste of plastic in your soft palate. Festina, however, had never upgraded. Most old Explorers hadn’t — diehard holdouts. I activated my comm with my tongue to see if I could pick up the admiral’s conversation… but as soon as I did,