Asimov's Science Fiction: March 2014 Page 2

  "Look up her record. It will be on the military lists. You've got access to all of those."

  "Sheesh, you think I'm not doing that already? Of course I'm... oh."

  "Yeah." Den sighed. At least something had worked. Melissa had the car wreck details.

  "Yeah." Melissa expelled a breath. "Okay. I don't think I can do much. Do you know how long this has been scheduled?"

  "Yes."

  "Call me back in an hour. I'll let you know."

  Through Palmdale and Sylmar, Jenni slept on. She woke when the car came to a stop in dead freeway traffic through Pasadena.

  "Parking lot," she murmured.

  "Pasadena." Six lanes of it. "They're building another overpass."

  "Well, that'll relieve things for sure." She smiled. "And you live here?"

  "Commute. Lot of time in planes."

  "Out of Wyoming?"

  "Lifestyle," he said.

  "I'm sure. A shining knight."

  "What am I doing?" he said. "I mean, aside from trying to give you a leg?" "Just trying to rescue me. It's kind of nice, but also a little creepy. It makes me think you've been spending years trying to work out just how. Years and years."

  "It's my field."

  "Yeah, but how long ago did you get into it? You didn't tell me that yet."

  He didn't have an answer.

  "See," she said.

  "I could let you out here," he said.

  "You're such a kid."

  It was an hour before she spoke again. Traffic picked up and they were coming into San Bernardino, near the complex. A standard pair of five story buildings in a commercial park, the labs were discreet and almost anonymous. A small sign over the door—ChaistonLabs—was all that distinguished it from any of the other buildings: housing, records management, and accounting firms.

  Melissa met them at the door. "Don't look so surprised," she told him. "I tracked you."

  "You're invading my privacy."

  "You're jeopardizing my livelihood."

  "Hi, I'm Jenni." His sister held out her hand to shake.

  Melissa took it. She glanced down at Jenni's leg. "Car wreck?"

  "Yeah," Jenni said with a grin. "Let's go with that."

  Melissa glanced over her shoulder. "We'll go in the service entrance."

  "Wow," Jenni said. "You're going to lose your job, right?"

  "No. I'll deny everything. I've already wiped all my phone records of contact with him. To do with this, anyway."

  "They can still track it," Den said. He followed along behind the two women. Jenni was still a little shaky on her feet. He knew they were going to do blood work on her before they started with the attachment. He hoped that wasn't going to be too much of a problem. Technically, he knew opiates in her system wouldn't interfere with the graft, but it would bring flags up.

  "If they want to track it, they can," Melissa said. "But of course they won't need to." Now she looked around at him. "Because if anything goes wrong, you'll take full responsibility."

  "Will I?"

  "He will," Jenni said. "He's good like that."

  "Yes he is," Melissa agreed.

  They came to a loading dock and Melissa went up a set of narrow concrete steps. She wanded her bracelet at the service door and it opened with a clank. "Welcome to ChaistonLabs," she said and ushered them in.

  Den followed Jenni into a warehouse space. There were tidy racks and a little fork lift parked in a corner. Melissa gave Jenni a laminated visitor card riveted to light chains to hang around her neck. "In case anyone stops us." She pointed to a long, bright corridor on the far side.

  "That way."

  Jenni looked at her card, then turned for the corridor.

  Melissa grabbed Den's arm as Jenni moved on ahead.

  "Mel?"

  "Is she high? Seriously?"

  "A few hours ago. She'll be fine."

  "Was she high when she crashed the car and lost her leg?"

  "You didn't see her file?"

  "Den. You could have put anything on that. And you probably did. I didn't even read it. I knew she was related to you. That was enough."

  Den nodded. He felt like he was on prickly ground. Melissa could just pull the plug any time. "I did fabricate the cause."

  "Figures. It's going to light up every medical board from here to Chicago if she's got opiates in her system when we start sampling."

  Den didn't say anything. He should have stopped Jenni when she'd gone in to arrange the feeding of the cat. Or gone with her. Simple.

  "You hearing me?"

  Den nodded. "I figure there's some way around it."

  "I'm going to have to talk to Ron."

  "This is my sister."

  "Who I'm guessing you didn't have anything much to do with until a few weeks back."

  "She came up on the databases. Amputee."

  "So you decided to play little brother rescuer." It wasn't a question.

  "She's family," he said. "If we can't do it now, then some other time." He glanced behind. The door from the corridor to the loading dock had closed. "You brought us in here. You could have asked all these questions on the phone."

  "I hadn't seen her wavering yet. Even then it took me a minute or two. She's a hard-core user. High, but upright, almost lucid."

  "We had coffee."

  Melissa snorted. "Yeah, that'll wake her right up."

  "You two should stop talking about me like that," Jenni said without turning around. "I'm an addict, but I'm not deaf."

  "The procedure won't cure you," Melissa said. "A new leg, that's all. I don't know what you might have read. We're not organs, just limbs and digits. Organs are a whole other setup."

  "The aliens, right?"

  "That's right."

  "She's not expecting to be cured," Den said. "She's just humoring her little brother.

  The rescuer."

  Jenni laughed.

  "Make a left up here," Melissa said.

  In a few moments they were in a small clean-room. Melissa locked the door. Jenni had already clambered up onto the locked gurney.

  "I need to strip?" she said.

  "Just the leg," Melissa told her. She whipped up a screen and waved her own badge at it. The screen unlocked and she quickly began compiling data. "Have you got your medical info with you?"

  "My what?" Jenni said. She grinned at Den.

  Den gave Melissa Jenni's memory flake. Everything he'd been able to glean and scam from various databases.

  Jenni unstrapped her leg as she stared at him. "You get that I'm only doing this for you, right?"

  Den nodded. He didn't trust her anyway.

  "Because I'm just an experiment to you, really. You think you're doing right by your family, doing something to help me out. But really it's all veneer."

  "Huh?" Melissa said.

  "Oh, you can listen, too, honey. You probably know what he's like. Yeah, I see you nodded. Did you two date? Are you still dating? 'Cos that would surprise me."

  Melissa pulled back from the screen. "We dated." She looked at Den. "For the briefest moment I thought we might have another run at it."

  "You should, girl. My brother, he's an ace. A catch and keeper."

  "Jenni," Den said.

  "Where have you been? That's what I want to know."

  "Tell you what," Melissa said. "I can finish this up in the theatre. I'll send in the nurse to get her prepped."

  "Melissa," Den said. "It's all right."

  "Don't. I'm trying to help you out here. I don't need to listen to all this family drama." She slipped out the door.

  "Well," Jenni said. "Sorry for screwing things up with your girlfriend."

  Den stared at her.

  "Oh, what a face."

  "I don't know what you think," he said. "But she's not my girlfriend." Somewhere in the back of his mind he'd known that he would regret doing this. Perhaps on some level she was right; perhaps he was doing it to try to assuage some kind of guilt from the past. As the thought passed t
hrough his head, he realized that she hadn't even said that. It had been implied, but not explicit. Perhaps it hadn't even been implied. She might have scratched into something he'd been trying to avoid.

  "Why don't we get this leg pinned onto me, then we can talk on the way home," she said.

  "Not as simple as that."

  "What? The leg, or talking?"

  He was about to be dismissive, but managed to say, "Both."

  "Yup."

  A nurse came in with a trolley of equipment. "Hi," he said. "Andy." He got busy with setting up things. He handed Jenni a waiver brick, took her temperature, and drew blood.

  "That's gonna be pretty cooked," she told him as she scanned through the document.

  Andy just raised his eyebrows and continued with drawing more blood and doing other tests.

  "I think," Jenni said. "That it's all going to work out." She slipped the stylus from the corner of the brick and signed.

  "Oh, it is," Andy said. "We've got all the FDA bull to get through, but we've done enough of these now, that it's no trouble. You're going to be amazed by how quick it takes. You'll be back on your feet in a day or so."

  "That for real?"

  "Maybe. Dr Travers wants to get it down to outpatient speed. Come in at eight A.M., get your new arm or whatever fitted, and be home in time to watch the game. Or pick up the kids from school. I'm serious."

  "Den?"

  "That's the plan," Den said. He was off thinking about other things. Could he talk to her about family stuff? Could he tell her that he hadn't seen their father in years either? The old man kind of stayed visible with his online posts. Fishing, football, and flying. Den kept an eye on it, but never answered, never posted himself. In a way he just wanted to keep track. Some days he felt like a voyeur, spying, but he didn't know how to shut it down. Shut down his own thoughts. He just had to know.

  "So we can go home right away?"

  "Pretty much," the nurse said. "Tomorrow morning, right?"

  "Well," Jenni said. "That is convenient."

  The nurse drew lines on Jenni's stump, marking out where the new leg would be fitted. "You need to keep still," he told her.

  "Tickles."

  Andy managed a smile.

  The door opened again and Melissa came back in. "Theater's ready. You two work out your stuff?"

  "In ten minutes?" Jenni said. "That's years of bedevilment tangled up in there."

  "So let's wheel her through," Andy said. "She's ready to go."

  While she was in theater, Den sat back in Melissa's office with a vanilla Pepsi. The leg had been taken from stock, fed with her cells from the nurse's sample to make it quicken to her. She would be under a local anesthetic—not that she really needed one, he thought—and the doctors would be making their incisions around the stump to expose the bone and vessels. The artificial leg would be slipped into place, and the knitting would begin immediately. The straps and tubes of the thing were almost intelligent in the way they could bind to the right places. Capillaries would sneak their way up through her flesh, gluing themselves to her own. The pieces of artificial bone would use their own building blocks to fill the gap to the remains of Jenni's bones. Muscles and tendons would all seek out their natural analogues and stitch in and stretch out.

  The doctors would have drips running into both the new leg and her own thigh, bringing bonding chemicals and nutrients directly to the site. Healing would be more rapid than any natural healing her body could manage on its own. And her own body would become stronger and faster-healing in general anyway. Den could see a time that people would opt for artificial replacements for injuries less traumatic. A broken bone that might take weeks or months to heal would become unnecessary. Remove the site of the break, implant some of this technology, and the new bone would graft through in moments.

  A pity it wouldn't correct her addictions. She was going to have to do that on her own. Or not. Den was surprised that he cared. She was sick, but more than physically. Mentally. Something missing in her that the drugs filled. A cliché.

  And he had something similar, he thought. Not that he'd taken the avenue she had, but she was right: there was something missing in him.

  "Hey," Melissa called from the doorway. "Mr. 'Lost in thought.' Let's grab a bite to eat."

  He glanced around. "Jenni?"

  Melissa shrugged. "In recovery. She did fine, but I think they had to knock her out with gas. Wasn't responding to the locals. Which I think they kind of knew anyway, once they'd seen her blood work. I'm going to be backtracking and filling in paperwork over this for days. Anyway, she's asleep for the next few hours. Maybe you and I can catch up over a burger and fries? Denny's?"

  "Sure." Den laughed, but it came out as a squeak. Nervous, he thought.

  Melissa gave him a smile.

  After they'd eaten, Melissa pushed back into her seat. "You're a small talk champ, you know that?"

  "Excuse me?"

  "You talked sports and weather, and a little bit about the Middle East situation, but nothing from here." She thumped her chest with a closed fist.

  Den shrugged. "What do you want to hear? I'm distracted by my sister. All right? I don't know how to reach her."

  "Or your father."

  Den stared at her. He managed a shrug again. "He's happy."

  "I'm sure he is. I don't understand you, though. You go to all this trouble trying to get her into the program. You somehow manage to get her onto the table with a couple of hours' notice."

  "With your help, of course."

  "Naturally. You jeopardize your career, your livelihood to do this for a woman you hardly know. The only connection you have with her is that you have the same father. A father whom neither of you have any contact with at all. Ever. The two of you are so different—I mean, she's so fluid and casual, and you're so wound up and kind of control-freaky, but you're really quite alike in many ways."

  "Control freak," he said.

  "Admit it. Anyway, you snipe at each other like a brother and sister should. You have similar mannerisms. It's kind of cute. It's almost like you grew up together."

  "Seriously?" Den thought that his sister seemed as related to him as the alien genetics they were using in the limbs and organs. More than just from a different species; from a different planet entirely.

  "I've got an idea," Melissa said. "Where's your father now?"

  Den scowled at her, wondering what she was up to. "Don't you go calling him. We're doing fine."

  "Sure you are. Where, though?"

  "Green River, Wyoming. He's probably out in the woods somewhere fishing. You won't find him. He won't even have his phone with him."

  "I'll make you a deal," Melissa said. "You let me organize something, and I'll go out with you again."

  Den raised his eyebrows. "Second dates aren't usually a kind of negotiation thing, you know."

  "Well, this would be more like an eighth date, after those false starts last December and June."

  "Technically."

  Melissa smiled. "Here's the thing. I like you. Still. But it's taken until now for me to figure what's up with you."

  "Oh, you've got me figured out?"

  "Hardly. Just that seeing your sister kind of unpeels a layer."

  Melissa stopped speaking and stayed silent. Den watched her. She had silky eyes, that seemed to flow in their sockets, the pupils wide, her lids lowered. The waitress came to ask if they wanted coffee. They ordered.

  "Okay," Den said after she'd gone. "What's your plan?"

  "You should see him."

  Den didn't answer.

  After a moment their coffees came and Melissa sugared hers up, tipped in lite-white and sipped. She closed her eyes. "Never as good as home," she said. She opened her eyes. "But not bad. We should be getting back. She might be waking."

  Den took a slug of his own coffee. It was all right. Not flash, but far from the worst he'd had. He took another gulp, then set it down and stood. "Let's go."

  Jenni was consci
ous when they came into the recovery room. "Where have you two lovebirds been?" she said. "I've been awake for ages."

  Den told her. "We didn't think you'd have woken already."

  "Strong constitution," she said. "It feels kind of weird, though. It's like a reverse phantom limb. I used to have that, you know, the sense of the leg still being there, even though it wasn't. Now it's like I've got the sense of the prosthesis, but it's an actual leg. You want to have a look?"

  "Of course," he said.

  Jenni swung around on the bed, slipping the leg out from the covers. She flexed it up and down. "Don't know how come it's so healed up already. Takes me months just to heal a scratch these days. You know, with my compromised system and all."

  The leg looked fine to Den. The skin tone was a little off, and he could see the seam, but the leg itself would still be working on that, looking at Jenni's system and adapting itself to her. Aside from that, it seemed perfect. There were no indentations or bumps around the join, except for the tiny scar. She moved it around for them, lifting her toes up and twisting her ankle.

  "Did you put any weight on it yet?" Melissa asked.

  "Already? Hang no. That would be just inviting disaster, don't you think?"

  "Has the physio been in to look you over?"

  "I think so. Cute guy, twenty-three or so?"

  "Carl."

  "Yeah. He came and twisted and pulled at it. I think he said he would be back later.

  I was still pretty groggy, though I'm pretty often pretty groggy." She grinned, but it faded quickly. She put her hand up to her mouth. "Uh-oh."

  "Problem?" Melissa said.

  Den stepped back. He eyed the door. So much for what Melissa wanted to happen in his family.

  Jenni stared at him. She dropped her hand and pushed herself off the bed.

  "Steady," Melissa said.

  Den moved for the door. He got his hand on the latch, but that was all.

  Jenny swiped at him. Her fist caught his elbow and his arm swung down. Pain sheared up his upper arm. He yelped and stumbled to the floor.

  "Den," Melissa said.

  Jenni staggered back. She lost her footing and fell beside him. It felt like she twisted intentionally to land right on top of him. He yelped again. Jenni started laughing.

  "What's so funny?" Melissa said. She bent and helped Jenni to her feet.