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doesn't have another X to make up for its defects, the damage stays. And over
millennia, the Y chromosome has become less and less able to protect men from
all sorts of genetic defects, diseases, and disorders."
"And Robust Y fixes chromosome damage."
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Lisle, Holly - Hunting the Corrigan's Blood
Badger nodded. "It sounded good when I read about it. 'It doesn't do all that
much for the man who takes it, but if he has sons, they're supposed to inherit
complete, undamaged Y chromosomes."
"You sound like you know more about it than someone with just a casual
interest would. You wanted to try Robust Y?"
"Only when I thought that I might like to have children. I didn't want them to
inherit my albinism."
We looked at each other. I realized when he'd been thinking about having
children, he'd been thinking about having them with me. I hadn't ever
considered a family. I kept discovering whole huge facets of
Badger that I'd overlooked.
I said, "Oh."
Badger flushed and shrugged. "Maybe someday."
I could only nod.
The shipcom broke the awkward silence by announcing, "I have established
ownership of the
Lazy
Rider
."
I was grateful for the interruption. "Who owns it?"
"Directly, Meileone Healthcorps. Indirectly, Meileone Healthcorps is a
subsidiary of Meileone
Brighthope Industries, which in turn is owned by the Bradomar Corporation;
Bradomar is a holding company owned by two separate dummy corporations which
in turn are owned exclusively by the partners Lashanda Elenday and Dagmar
Teach."
My mother. And a partner.
"Can you locate a holo of Dagmar Teach?"
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ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
"Teach's dummy corporation, Dagmar Productions, has one on file." The shipcom
took only an instant to find it and bring it up. Badger and I stood studying
Dagmar Teach for a few moments. I recognized him.
I just couldn't believe he hadn't been more careful in hiding his identity.
"That's John Alder," I told
Badger.
"I know."
"They're working together. They're both in this vampire thing, and stealing a
ship from Peter Crane." I
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Lisle, Holly - Hunting the Corrigan's Blood stared down at my feet for a
moment, trying to untangle the threads of the conspiracy Badger and I had
uncovered. "We're working for Crane. Danniz Oe's in this for himself. And my
mother is the third party.
We and Oe are both out to get her." I looked up again. "If she's lucky, we'll
get to her first. She's in deep."
"But so are we."
I nodded. "We can't back out. The only way out is through."
Minutes after Badger's positive confirmation of the presence of the
Corrigan's Blood
, we docked at
Meileone Station. We'd been assigned to Level Five; this was not a level for
working ships and working crews, but a party-and-profligacy level that suited
the falsified status of the
Merry Widow
, and that would add some verisimilitude to our act as Adana Gantrey and Brian
Darkman. I hated party levels, though. I hated the noise and the chumminess
and the instant, false camaraderie of nosy dock neighbors.
I hated the busy-busy little shops full of touristy junk that always lined the
inside of the dock corridors. I
hated the way I knew real captains looked at pampered rich dilettantes who
took their ships out for entertainment once or twice a year, and knew only
enough about ship-piloting to keep from killing themselves& and sometimes not
even that much. In all the time I'd been a captain, I had avoided the party
docks.
And now, here we were.
I locked us into our berth, started the two-way communication between us and
the station, then stared in disbelief as every alarm light on my console panel
went from green to disaster-red.
I yelled, "Badger," but he couldn't jump in to assist me. The lights on his
console had lit up, too. He was already talking to the shipcom as fast as he
could, tracing alarms back one at a time to their sources. I
started in on my own batch of alarms; every time I successfully traced one
back, I found out the same thing. It had been jammed, but the system was fine.
"Nothings wrong," I told Badger.
"I know, but keep checking anyway."
We worked faster. If someone had created all the false alarms to hide a real
alarm, we might not have much time. I traced back system after system, and
watched light after light go from red back to green as soon as I'd manually
queried the circuit. All the while, sweat trickled down my neck as I imagined
one of those circuits hiding a break that connected it to explosives, or
poison gas, or something.
Green light, and green light, and green light.
Dammit. The shipcom wouldn't just clear them. I tried to override all the
alarms at once, but nothing [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]