Time: the implacable foe — the greatest of allies. The growth of beard signaled a reminder that he'd need a treatment again before time sucked him up and spit him out an old man.
In the medical section of his labs in the Itreatic Asteroids, a large N-matrix computer held his personal body code. From it, growth hormone boosters were produced and injected in the bloodstream. Genetically perfect polymerase VII would be released along with an ionizing mutation antigen that would tag suspicious cells and repair mutated DNA. From his blood serum an antibody count and identification program would catalog any new antigens, determine their beneficence or evil, and clone antibodies to remove deleterious elements from his system. Such procedures kept him looking a healthy thirty — despite his eighty-seven years out and about in space.
He plucked absently at the stubble on his cheeks. Immortality assumed that life had a purpose. Which in turn assumed that continuing to live advanced that purpose. Given those assumptions, what could there be to life that he — the individual living it — did not immediately understand? Or could it be that simple survival was the only purpose for living — or the universe for that matter.
He pinched his eyes shut and shook his head. "Praetor, I. "
He got to his feet, gray cloak swirling about him. "First Officer, you have the helm. I will be in my quarters should you need me."
"Acknowledged, Lord Commander," the bridge speaker told him tonelessly.
He paced through the bridge hatch, choosing to walk the distance to his quarters instead of riding the shuttle. Who would his son be? Would he have Chrysla's beauty? Her glowing amber eyes? Would the young man look like him? Strapping, keen of mind? Or is he as deadly as I am — as single-minded of purpose. as cold and heartless?
"Staffa? What's the matter with you?" He sighed, seeking the key to his troubled thoughts.
Caught in his musings, he didn't notice Skyla as she
walked from the gymnasium, freshly showered, pale skin still flushed with the heat of heavy exercise.
"Everything all right?" she asked, matching his stride.
"I was pondering serious questions."
"Such as?"
He took a deep breath, staring into the depths of her crystal blue eyes. Fragments of memories swirled in his mind. Still he hesitated.
"Staffa, you're not yourself these days. It worries me. One minute you're sharp as a molecular edge, the next you're drowning in self-pity. You hide it very well, but I've made a habit out of studying you, learning how you think. I didn't make it to Wing Commander by my good looks. You want to tell me what's eating at you?"
At his reluctance, she shook her head in frustration. "Look, if you can't talk to me, who else is there? And beside that, when you act like this, I worry about the implications it will have on the command."
"Skyla, do you ever wonder why we're here?" He stopped before the hatch to his quarters. "Are we just accidents? Just organic moecules? Simple polypeptide strands hooked together like some intricate graphite sculpture? Where do we come from? Why do we have the shape we do? What purpose does it serve that we are born, grow, learn, struggle, sire, and finaly die? Is it only to produce the next generation' that we do so?" He palmed his hatch and gestured her inside.
"Sure, I've wondered. I just never thought I could find the answers. That's for people like the Seddi, I guess."
He spun around as soon as they passed the second hatch. "I Gods Rotted can't sleep anymore!" He shook his head. "I can't concentrate, can't think. All the ordered discipline in my mind. it's gone, turned random and chaotic. I have panic attacks for no reason. I start to sweat, can't breathe. I get dizzy and feel a pain in my chest. I suffer from bouts of clinical depression. So, yes, you're right. My ability to command is suspect."
She stood hip-shot, watching him soberly from beneath lowered brows. "Staffa, you've been different ever since Myklene. Sassa and Rega teeter on the brink of war. You've got to have every one of your wits about you. Pharmaceuticals can control what you're experiencing, you
know. But it's more than that. The Praetor did something, said something,
didn't he?"
"Pragmatic to the last, Skyla?"
"Damn right I am!" She shrugged it off and added quietly. "I know a little about physical psychology. When we get back, will you take something to keep your brain chemistry in balance? I'm worried about you, and I guess you. well, you're the only friend I've got."
Where did that anxiety in her voice come from? What fed that pained expression of hers? Rotted Gods, she really did care. The thought of it left him off balance. In defense, he stared at the incongruous fireplace.
She stood motionless, waiting.
He rubbed nervous hands together as he turned to face her. "I… I dream of odd things. You see, the old man picked the lock on some hidden box in my mind. Long ago I found that he'd set mental booby traps in my brain. Psychinstalled trip switches with hypnotic suggestions to unhinge me — to suddenly rob me of confidence or to bring sudden indecision, I found them over the years. One by one, I sorted out the subtle mental markers and deactivated them. Then on Myklene I learned the extent of the tampering he'd done to my mind. All right! I see it in your eyes. I'll drop by the psychiatric center and get a prescription."
Skyla exhaled her relief. "I understand why you killed him."
"Do you? What are the answers to those questions I asked in the corridor, Skyla? Is there a purpose to this life we lead? Are we doing anything but metabolizing, procreating, and surviving?"
She stalked across the rug, arms crossed defensively. "In my life — until I joined the Companions — I had to scramble to stay alive. For me, survival was everything. Maybe it still is. I try not to worry beyond a full belly, a warm secure bed, and a whole skin. If somebody has to get shot, I do my damnedest to make sure it's the other guy. What's more important than that?"
" don't know. Perhaps that's what I want to find out." He gave her a speculative glance. "Didn't you have someone when you were a kid… a family? A mother who held you? Relatives?"
She laughed bitterly. "Yeah! Sure! My mother was a
prostitute. She died when I was four. Or was I five? I did chores for the Sylene cribs until I was twelve. That's when I was sold — despite my free status. A most noble and generous man Stryker was. Even after my life in the cribs I wasn't ready for him. He bought me, raped my virginity away, and used me like a… Well, never mind. Careless of him. He should never have left an energy blade within my reach. I think the death warrant they put out on me is still valid.
"So I got to the street, and, by the Gods, I survived. I spent the days in hiding, the nights in running — anything to keep out of the clutches of the slavers and the police. That's where I learned the assassin's trade. I was young, pretty. They never believed an innocent like me could be a threat. I lived cold, hungry, and scared. and then I saw one of the Companions walking boldly down the main avenue."
She smiled, her expression softening. "Oh, Staffa, how I admired that bright uniform, the way those mining pigs shuffled to get out of his way. Even the bulls — the cops— moved away and saluted." She tilted her head, the whitegold of her braided hair hanging to one side. "It was old Mac Rylee, out on the town, looking for the best whorehouse planetside, as usual."
"I take it you conned him somehow or another?" Staffa remembered Rylee, the Companions' greatest barroom brawler.
"Sure did. Cut his purse right off his belt and handed it back to him. Told him that whoever he was, he needed my services."
"And he immediately tried to bed you!"
"And never succeeded." She grinned mischievously, azure eyes shining. "As a woman looking to make her way to the top, you never bed the man whose favor you'd win. You make it by being one hundred percent better than anyone else. Where another man would work four hours, you work eight."