Context by Deborah Walsh

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Context (13/20)
by Deb Walsh

Danziger awoke with the most godawful taste in his mouth. Like that time Wentworth dared him to drink something from every bottle in that bar down on Earth, in Alaska. Only this time, he didn't think he'd had such a good time getting into this state.

Feeling as though he'd personally transported each and every one of those bottles from Alaska to G889, Danziger sat up gingerly, one hand gently probing his head for bumps and abrasions, the other balancing him against the wall of the tent. No injuries, so that wasn't the cause for his discomfort. Discomfort, hell.

Right about now, John Danziger would willingly die, if it meant the taste and the pain and the queasy stomach would just go away.

Amend that. The searing pain. He'd turned his head toward the tent flap, and got a good dose of brilliant sunlight straight in the face, and now his eyes were racing one another to reach the back of his skull. He wasn't sure which one won, but it sure wasn't him.

Damn! Why did he feel so rotten? No way Adair would countenance even a cc of a hooch of the order necessary to plow him under like this ... ah. Memory returned in the form of images filtered through the dreams. Now he _really_ wanted to die.

Julia had been right - combining the Terrian dreams and a sedi-derm had been a _bad_ idea. He felt worse now than he had yesterday, despite the fact that it had to be late morning. On any other kind of day, a sleep as long as he'd had last night would've set him up for days, but all John Danziger wanted to do was crawl back under his blanket and blank out.

But he had more immediate concerns. One was to wash out the taste in his mouth. Another was purely biological. And even more important than the others was to find out where his kid was. And Adair's.

As he dragged stiff fingers through his tangled hair, John decided that no one was going to tell him anything until he got rid of that taste in his mouth. Grabbing his sunglasses, he shoved them on and stumbled out into the unpleasant light of day.

***

The Mary that led Yale and Alonzo through the caverns to where her belongings lay was very different from the Mary they'd met several months ago at the Biodome.

Beneath the dirt and the grime, a tan glowed. Her eyes were bright with curiosity, a curiosity that had been all but buried in her Terrian psyche. The hesitation to use words was still present, but her mastery of the language had increased dramatically. And she moved with more assurance than Yale could have hoped. A tight spot in his chest eased as he observed how well she'd done for herself in the past few months; a sense of guilt he hadn't acknowledged for a while dissipated.

They came to the small cave where Mary had stored her things. The very fact that she had things at all was a major change in her outlook on the world. Her Terrian staff was gone, of course; when she'd saved Yale from the Terrians, she'd left it behind, not thinking the Terrians would lock her out of the earth. A blanket, a canteen, a rucksack, a few implements, some machinemade, some fashioned from native wood and stone, made a small, pitiful pile in the corner of the cave. Mary displayed no pride in her accomplishment, no self-pity, no embarrassment. Mary was simply Mary, perhaps more so, perhaps less so, than before. Yale found himself watching the young woman with a renewed sense of wonder, a wonder that gave him hope for them all.

Alonzo bent to help her gather her things, and she gave him a rare smile, but said, "I can do it myself."

Alonzo smoothed back her tangled hair from her face and smiled gently back at her. She turned her attention to collecting her things and stowing them in the sack.

"How long have you been following us, Mary?" Yale asked quietly.

She stood up, closing the knapsack. When that was done, she looked up at Yale and replied, "Since you left the Biodome."

"And before that?"

"I lived in a cave nearby. I found some of these things there. They don't smell so bad now.

Grendlers," she added, with a disparaging shake of her head.

Alonzo had to smile. Their dealings with Grendlers hadn't been universally bad, but the smell always was.

"Why didn't you join us, Mary?"

She tilted her head quizzically, regarding him with that silent, unearthly calm of hers. "I told you. I was not ready."

"And now you are?"

"Now is my time."

"Because the Terrians said so?" Alonzo inquired curiously.

"No. Because it is my time." She slung the knapsack over her shoulder and brushed past them then, not offering further explanation, and returned to the cavern where Morgan and Julia labored over the biostat chip.

***

"I'm in," Morgan announced suddenly, his voice breathless with excitement.

"Your heart rate is rising, Morgan - I think maybe that's enough for now," Julia responded, frowning over the readouts on the diaglove.

"Get Yale - we need to record this," Morgan ordered impatiently.

"Morgan, this can wait -"

"Get Yale!"

"Okay, Morgan, take it easy -"

"I'm here, Julia," Yale announced from the connecting passageway. Mary preceded him into the cavern, followed by Yale and Alonzo. Mary dropped to her haunches a few feet away, watching with interest, while Yale came over and sat down beside Morgan. Alonzo stood nearby, folded his arms over his chest and leaned casually against the cave wall.

Opening his cybernetic arm, Yale extracted a cable that he fitted into the VR gear Morgan wore. "Ready to start recording, Morgan," he said.

"Good," Morgan breathed, relaxing slightly.

A holographic image of the chip's geometry appeared in midair above Yale's arm. The view was breathtaking as the combined efforts of the sunstones, the gear, and Morgan's mind dropped from a panoramic view to surface level, navigating the streets, gates and junctions of the chip's architecture. Microscopic elevations on the chip's surface became elegant, towering skyscrapers in virtual reality. Depressions too small for the human eye to perceive unaided became canyons of dizzying dimensions. Light pulsed along the broad avenues and narrow sidestreets of the chip as the sunstones activated its programming.

"Ow!" Morgan complained suddenly, and Julia wrenched her eyes from the sight suspended over Yale's arm, and directed her attention to Morgan. For a moment, she didn't realize what was bothering him, until she noticed the chip nestled in his palm, the filament wires once more following their preprogrammed imperative. The wires were growing, piercing his skin in search of his central nervous system.

"Stop!" Julia ordered anxiously. "Stop it now, Morgan - the chip's activated, it's trying to bond with your system -"

Yale calmly reached into Morgan's hand and picked up the chip with his cybernetic hand, but the wires had already worked their way into the skin of Morgan's palm. Morgan cried out as Yale tugged, but the chip wouldn't budge. Tiny beads of blood welled up around each of the fine wires. Yale started to reach out with his other hand, but Julia's shot out and halted him.

"Don't. It could try to link with your system."

"We have to get it off him, Julia -"

"Get it off!" Morgan insisted.

Julia shook her head to Yale, but turned back to Morgan's hand, poising the diaglove over the chip. She spoke a command to the unit, ordering it to activate the surgical laser to sever the shining threads driving deeper into Morgan's palm. First one, then another was cut by the thin beam of concentrated light. "It's working," Julia breathed, then gasped as the wires quickly reconnected and continued their inexorable progress. "Damn!"

The chip would not release from his hand despite their efforts to dislodge it. As they watched, it tightened its hold, puckering the skin as the wires wound deeper into the flesh.

"Turn off the program, Morgan," Julia ordered. "Tell the sunstones to stop -"

"I'm trying," Morgan answered, gritting his teeth against the pain. Suddenly, the projection hovering over Yale's arm changed, as numbers flashed by so quickly, they were simply after-images on the retina.

Impossibly, the flickering numbers increased in speed until they became a subliminal strobe. Julia watched, horror-stricken.

"Look," Yale breathed. "Look at the chip."

"What?" Julia demanded, but she tore her eyes away from the hologram to stare at the chip. The filaments were receding! One had already retracted from Morgan's skin, waving feebly like antennae, and she could see others gradually withdrawing. The chip itself was becoming smaller.

It didn't seem possible, but the bio-electronics of the chip were definitely outside her field. Bennett had said that the chip had probably been injected, which meant it must have started out as almost microscopic in size. Yet it had grown to a couple of centimeters across, the wires infiltrating the human nervous system and penetrating the brain. The sunstones were reversing the process. As the chip continued to dwindle in size, she watched in growing amazement and growing awe - Elizabeth Anson had been a brilliant scientist, more brilliant than Julia had guessed.

Within minutes, only a tiny dark speck remained in Morgan's palm, amid a smear of blood. Finally, the projection dimmed and went dark.

"My God, it's gone," Julia whispered.

"What?" Morgan demanded, removing his hand from the sunstones and tearing off his gear. He glared accusingly at his palm. "We don't have a sample, then," he complained. "I went through all of that for nothing?"

"We have better than a sample, Morgan," Yale told him with a wide grin. "We have a deactivation program."

He reached across his artificial arm and switched off the recorder. "The sunstones decoded the programming and did what you told them to do - they stopped the chip."

Morgan lifted his palm to his face and stared, openmouthed, at his palm. "It's gone? You mean - we did it?" He looked up, his expression confused for a moment, then he broke into a delighted smile. "We did it!"

Julia used the diaglove to recover what was left of the chip. "We did it with a chip that isn't implanted in a human. We don't know if this program will work on a chip that has insinuated itself into a human host. Or what it will do to that host."

Yale shook his head. "Then we must find out, Julia.

As soon as possible -"

"No."

They all turned around to face the source of that single, imperious word. Alonzo had moved closer, and now he stood behind them, his arms folded across his chest, not in repose, but in challenge.

"Well, why not?" Morgan demanded, a hint of a whine creeping into his voice. Julia nearly smiled; Morgan had just accomplished the impossible, and now that accomplishment was being contested.

"Because we're not ready. Not so soon after Eben's death, or Devon's illness. If this fails, if the test subject ... dies ... this group may not recover."

Silence descended as they all digested that. After a moment, Mary asked, "Why does that matter?"

***

"Where is everybody?"

Magus looked up from the coffee pot in the mess tent as John Danziger, looking like something a Grendler had dragged in and left behind, came into the tent. She figured he looked about like she felt, so set her own cup down and poured one for him, and thrust it into his hands.

"Thanks," he murmured, raising the cup two-handed to his lips. After a long swallow, he pulled the cup away and repeated his question.

"Well, let's see ... Bess and the kids are down by the lake having a swim. Most of the others are out foraging. I don't know where Yale, Julia or Alonzo are - probably the same. Morgan's probably off somewhere playing in VR - although Julia said something about the sunstones interfering with VR, so maybe not."

Danziger accepted this and sipped at his coffee again.

"Left you behind on watch?"

Magus shrugged. "More or less. By the way, John - Cameron, Walman and I all dreamed last night."

"All three of you?" Magus nodded. "Musta been a doozy."

"It was ... interesting," she admitted. "I'm sorry, John - I'm sorry you have to go through this," she added with genuine emotion.

Danziger blushed beneath his tan, and coughed uncomfortably. "It'll be over soon. I hope."

"Me, too. Nice to know we're probably going to make it to New Pacifica. But I sure as hell don't want to see what happened in our dream come true."

Danziger visibly hesitated, and Magus thought she knew why. Looking into those dull, distant eyes had unnerved her, and she wasn't that close to Devon. Oh, they got along okay, and she respected the woman, but they weren't what you could call friends. Danziger on the other hand ... well. She could only imagine what it must feel like for him.

Swallowing hard, Danziger asked the question. What happened in the dream? Magus gestured toward the bench at the nearby table, and Danziger sat. She picked up the coffee pot and topped off both their cups, then sat down with him and told him. The flat, angry look on his face didn't surprise her, nor the glitter in his eyes. If she didn't know better, she'd swear John Danziger was fighting back tears.

***

"If the death of one ensures the survival of the others, if that life is given willingly ... then what is the problem?"

Julia and Morgan stared open-mouthed at Mary, dumbfounded by her question. Yale smiled faintly, and Alonzo simply studied her as he dropped into a seated position on the dirt floor of the cave.

"What is the problem? Well, it is a complex question, Mary," Yale told her, switching into lecture mode. "It is a question for which each person must have their own answer."

"It's a waste," Alonzo put in. "Especially if we can take steps to make sure it doesn't end up in someone's death."

"And after all we've been through, to lose another one of us might be more than we can take," Julia added gently.

"Why?" Mary asked simply.

The others exchanged equally confused glances. Yale attempted to answer her, however. "The death of any member of the group affects us all. Think of us as a 2E.. an organism, an animal if you like."

"But you are human," Mary protested.

"Yes, we are," Yale agreed with a small chuckle. "But we are also members of a group, a group in which each of us has a role to play. So, like an animal, some of us are its arms and legs, some of us its heart. Some of us its brain. Together, we can function as a unit, a single entity."

"Like the tribe," Mary suggested. "It has many parts, yet it functions as one."

"Yes," Yale approved. "We are like a tribe. The loss of one of us makes us less than we were before. Each of us brings something unique to the tribe, something the tribe needs to be itself. Without that something, the tribe no longer functions in the same way."

Mary nodded solemnly, her brow furrowed as she struggled to make sense of what they told her. She reached out and spread her palm against Yale's chest.

"You are the heart of the tribe."

Yale smiled at her, covering her hand with his. She tilted her head, looking at the hand holding hers with a curious expression. Then she looked over his shoulder and looked at Julia. "You are its brain."

Julia grinned, blushing. "I wouldn't go that far -"

"Julia," Yale prompted gently, admonishing her not to confuse Mary.

"Alonzo is the tribe's dreamer. Morgan ... what is Morgan?" Mary inquired innocently.

Strangled laughs answered her, but it was Yale who gave her a reply. "Morgan is one of the tribe's hands, one of the people who makes it work."

Morgan relaxed, smiling to himself, at Yale's description. It could have been much worse.

"And what is Devon?" Mary asked at last.

Alonzo sat up straight, conviction in his face. The tight, worried expression of the last few days melted away with sudden awareness. "Devon is the will," he said clearly.

Mary turned and looked at him for a long moment, then nodded with satisfaction.

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