CHAPTER TWO
San Kyarr’s knees trembled. You are a force never before seen, her mother had said, and everyone recognizes that someday you’ll have a chance to prove it. Your father, rest his soul, knew a Buddhist monk who saw it all, the future; something big is headed your way, and it’s your job to prepare so you can defend what’s good. Death is coming. It moves quickly, and travels astride powerful engines.
She risked a glance at her fellow candidates, their eyes fixed ahead. They resembled San. All had shaved heads so that after she peeked down the line it reminded her of a row of cue balls resting on stubby torsos, each girl four and a half feet tall. Their bare heads glistened with sweat. Summer in Texas crept in through narrow windows, open on each side of the barracks, their metal frames gray with paint layered so thick that it gathered in drops, dried over the years into oval-shaped tears of color. Gray, the color of Fleet. Anything metal, wood, or plastic had been coated with it, a tradition that lingered from the days when mankind’s primary navy had been one of metal and water, the paint meant to protect precious materials from the corrosion of salt.
She glanced at her skin, its light brown just enough to set her apart from the others. One girl glanced over, grimacing. San wished that Fleet could paint her gray, hiding San under thick layers from the acid looks of Earth-born candidates, Americans who somehow knew from her skin alone that her father had once been the enemy. Myanmarese.
The girl mouthed words, silently: Go back to Mars.
“I doubt any of you know this,” the sergeant began, “because most of you are too stupid. But your bodies are perfection—all Fleet. Lovingly altered to absorb oxygen at a more efficient rate than unmodified personnel, and capable of producing excess glucose and improved hemoglobin for surviving combat g-forces. Your short stature and thick bones also help, but don’t think your breeding gives you an automatic pass. Some of you will be going home, washed out.”
San waited. On either side of them stood rows of bunk beds and despite being on Earth for the first time, her body handled the increased gravity with no problem. Sleep was another issue. The transit from Mars had taken forever and it was her first trip, so San hadn’t rested much and now she fought to keep her eyes open. Exhaustion had accumulated in the corners of her thought, gaining mass with every minute until it gathered on the outside of her eyelids, tiny weights that pulled downward, her eyes on the verge of surrender. They were about to flutter shut when a woman in a black uniform entered.
“This is Sister Mirriam-Ann MacGuire; you will address her as Sister. She has something to say.”
The girl who had thrown a dirty look whispered to one next to her, loud enough for San to hear. “First a freak from Mars. Now a freak from the Church.”
Sister Mirriam-Ann walked on stubby legs, squat. She had white hair tucked under a nun’s coif and dark circles around her eyes. Half her face had been torn apart and rebuilt. San imagined that whoever had reshaped her skin had done it using clay, sculpting it so it retained an inherent symphony of lumps. It reminded San of the lava flows on Mars, rock frozen by the cold atmosphere before it had a chance to run far, forming enormous globules of solid material that looked fascinatingly grotesque. Those were all black; basalt. Sister Mirriam-Ann’s skin looked bone white, pale except for masses of pink scar tissue that punctuated her appearance to invoke revulsion from anyone who stopped to look. When she spoke, San expected her to sound as ugly as she appeared; instead the nun’s voice was surprisingly soft.
“Good evening. In case you are wondering, yes, I have been to space to minister to the faithful assigned at forward operating outposts; I was there when the Sommen first invaded. They gave me this face.” She pointed to her cheek. “I wasn’t much older than you are now. Eighteen. My order visited Karin-Two and I don’t remember much of the events except for waking up on a tanker ship converted into a hospital, headed back to Earth, where a field medic did his best to rebuild me—without the assistance of bots. Most of the hospital acceleration couches were empty except for me and a couple of sisters from my order; the Sommen didn’t leave many alive. They never do.”
The nun paused and leaned against one of the bunks. “My order is in a Fleet ancillary order that has many elements but, most importantly, we have . . . special skills. Ones that Fleet thinks should be fully integrated into their operations. That’s why I’m here; this is your final, pre-Fleet test. I will determine your strengths and weaknesses so that we can better determine where you will best serve and weed out those who aren’t suited before we invest in the final training courses for Fleet occupational specialties. Your personal wants and dreams have no place here. All of you, including the boys—who are getting this same lecture in their dormitory right now—have potential, but that is all. Potential means almost nothing. My order decides who becomes an officer and who winds up in latrine engineering. Sergeant,” the Sister said. She turned toward a door at the back of the dorm, and headed through. San caught a glimpse of a small office beyond; its furnishings were sparse, with a large wooden crucifix attached to the rear wall.
Since when had the Catholics, or any religion, been part of Fleet? she wondered.
“Line up,” the sergeant barked. The girls jostled into position, some of them needing help from the woman’s swagger stick. “You will be called one at a time and will enter Sister Mirriam-Ann’s office when ordered. What you are about to experience is classified. You will not discuss the questions you are asked at any time. Not now, not tomorrow, not ever.”
Part of San felt nervous—not scared, the kind of energy she always felt when something exciting was about to happen. Classified? What did that even mean? Lost in thought and tired, by the time it was her turn San stumbled into the office to stand at ease, almost missing it when the nun ordered her to sit on a metal chair.
“Have you ever heard claims that human beings only use ten to fifteen percent of their brains?” Sister Mirriam-Ann asked.
“No, sir. I mean, Sister.”
“Well, people have made that claim and they continue to, even though it’s ludicrous. There’s no way our entire blood-pumping system is dedicated to support so much dormant tissue. What is true”—the nun stood and faced the wall, her back to San—“is that you can get some interesting effects by increasing the number of synapses and tinkering with other portions of the brain. Does this make sense?”
“No, Sister; I don’t know why this is relevant.”
“We face two great evils, child. They are on the horizon and you and your kind will have to face them before you’re ready; one evil works from within Fleet and another works from without. But that discussion is for another time. It is only important that you remember these words, and understanding will come.”
“Now, then.” The Sister lowered herself back into her chair. “I’m going to ask you a series of questions, and I want you to answer them honestly and completely. Understood?”
San nodded.
“San Kyarr—San for short—daughter of Maung Kyarr and Nang Vongchanh. Second-generation Fleet. Your parents relocated to special duty on Mars where they entered you into the genetic breeding program soon after your mother’s pregnancy, correct?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Father, Buddhist. Mother, Roman Catholic. Do you believe in ghosts, San?”
The question surprised her and she laughed, stifling it almost immediately.
“Something funny? Am I entertaining?”
“No . . . no, Sister.”
“No, you don’t find me entertaining or no you don’t believe in ghosts?”
“Yes, Sister, you are entertaining . . . I mean . . .” San’s hands shook; she was blowing it, her mind too sleepy. For a second she wished that her parents hadn’t placed her in the Fleet program in the first place, wondering about the normal Martian kids—tall and slender, elegant in gravity and so sure of everything. Even with her brown skin, nobody would guess she was Myanmarese if she had the bone structure of a Martian. Her mother’s words surfaced in a dim memory.
There is goodness in the world; have faith. Lies are for cowards.
Sister Mirriam-Ann slapped her desk. “Answer the question.”
“Yes, I believe in ghosts.”
San wished she could take back the words after they’d been uttered. Forget about the fact that the nun was trying to fluster her; the answer she’d just given was a wash-out response. Fleet discharged anyone showing signs of psychiatric disorders and now San waited for the nun to snap her fingers and tell her to pack her bags.
“I see.” Sister Mirriam-Ann leaned forward. The woman stared and San waited but soon felt uncomfortable in the silence and looked away, glancing at the wall and trying to ignore the sensation that someone peeled through layers of her brain to find disappointing results. This woman was different—the whole thing bizarre. A nun? For Fleet? What the hell was going on and why would Fleet outsource its decisions to a religious order with no publicly advertised military connection whatsoever?
“Interesting. Let’s try something different. A Fleet officer approaches and there’s nobody around. He tells you about an impending disaster: A cargo ship named the Minerva will crash into Phobos Station in three weeks. Immediately afterward the man disappears into thin air. Do you, A, ignore the experience, thinking that you must be exhausted and it was just a random hallucination brought on by micro-g drug treatments, B, report it to Fleet Command, or C, turn yourself into the squadron therapist?”
No answers came and San felt sweat on her forehead at the same time a sensation of cold swept through, the chill of failure and its associated terror. I have nothing to lose now, San figured. The Sister told us this was a test; a test for what?
“I’d report it to command.”
Sister Mirriam-Ann jotted something on a note pad.
“Next question. Do you ever get déjà vu? The feeling you’ve been somewhere or in some situation even though logically you know it’s your first time?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“How often?”
“I don’t know. Sometimes.”
San began to sweat, her sense of failure mounting. After a few minutes it felt as if someone else answered the questions while she floated to the side, watching her body shake and her chances for making a Fleet assignment plummet. Years of training in Mars’ orbit, her breath fast and shallow from the fear of emergency decompression drills where they punctured candidates’ suits and handed them a roll of patching tape, did nothing to help. Reality was always slightly different from the tanks. In the tank, despite the fact that everything seemed so authentic, the mind knew; it always did. Tank training and drills were as close to the real thing as one could achieve, but underlying it all was the foundation of simulation, an odor of dishonesty that crept into one’s mind no matter how rational the scenario. Her consciousness moved further away, a sensation of dislocation increasing by the second.
Sister Mirriam-Ann paused to read her notes and then tapped the pencil against her front teeth. “Tell me something, San. Are you having an out-of-body experience? Where it feels as if you’re watching this from a third-person perspective and someone else is answering the questions?”
A chill passed through her. How could the woman know?
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Does this happen a lot?”
“Sometimes when I fall asleep I see a light, as if someone is turning a lamp on and off in front of my face. Then my chest gets tight and I can’t move. The next thing I know, I’m soaring. If I want to, I can fly through my house, into the street or anywhere. But it doesn’t happen all the time, Sister.”
“How was your home life?” the nun asked, changing the subject. “Was it bad? Abuse, sexual or physical?”
“No! I have a good family. Mars is different from Earth, and I lived on a base all my life. So if anything it was a little boring. My mother raised me as a Catholic—to sacrifice everything for Fleet.”
Sister Mirriam-Ann nodded. “I’m sure that’s true but irrelevant; last set of questions. I’m going to show you some Zener cards and I want you to tell me what’s on the other side. I’ll look at them, but you’ll see only the blank side and have to guess or sense what I’m seeing. Ready?”
“Zener?”
“He was a researcher in the twentieth century with a fellow by the name of Rhine at Duke University; it doesn’t matter. You just guess what’s on the card. You have five choices: wavy lines, circles, squares, crosses and stars.” The nun held one up. San saw nothing but the back of it, a pattern of red and black diamonds, but without warning a vision came and went so quickly that she almost failed to notice.
I’m crazy, she thought. “Wavy lines.”
The nun repeated the process at least fifty more times; by the end of it San had a headache.
“Okay,” Sister Mirriam-Ann said while jotting a final note. “Dismissed.”
“Did I pass, ma’am?”
“We’ll have everyone’s results tomorrow. You’ll find out then.”
San walked from the office and shut the door; she couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d failed the interview, and by the time she reached her bunk the girl wiped away tears before sobbing into her pillow.
San stood at attention, sweating in the morning heat. The sun hadn’t yet risen but Texas’s summer filled the air with moisture and she hadn’t ever experienced humidity, so the saturated air made San gasp for breath, a cloying sensation that infused her gray uniform with sweat. One child fainted and a pair of medics dragged her away to a waiting medical transport. Minutes ticked by. When the sun peeked over the distant horizon it hit her face with more unwelcome warmth and San closed her eyes, praying for the ordeal to end.
“Are you from Earth?” a girl next to her whispered.
“I don’t think we’re supposed to talk,” said San.
“It doesn’t matter. If I don’t talk, I’ll pass out like that other girl. Are you?”
San had to stop herself from shaking her head. The movement would have been seen, getting her in trouble. “No. Mars.”
“I thought so. You look different from the rest of us.”
“Different?” San asked.
“A tiny bit shorter and stockier. Plus your skin is darker.”
San struggled to hide her nervousness. The next set of questions was always the same. How many times had she seen her father throw out his chest when answering the same queries, his voice tinged with hatred at having to defend his heritage, his right to even exist? How many times would she have to do the same? These were supposed to be the best candidates and if the program on Earth was the same as on Mars, the girl had spent the better part of her years corked into semi-aware systems and getting her brain stuffed with facts and computations. There should have been a greater tinge of logic to their thought processes but, clearly, San thought, common sense wasn’t part of the Earth-side program.
“I was modified while inside my mother’s womb. It was the first time they tried it, and that’s why I’m stockier than you. And my skin is darker because I’m half Myanmarese, half Laotian. Normal Martians are very tall and slender because of the reduced gravity.”
“You mean you’re Burmese?” the girl asked. “Same ones we fought in the Great Pacific War?”
“Myanmarese. Yes.”
“I thought so. Some of the other girls noticed too. I didn’t know any of you had the means to even afford genetic alterations. It’s shocking they let Burmese into Fleet.”
San felt sick. She urged her eyes to stay open in the heat and fought the combined sensations of incredulity and rage, suppressing an impulse to lunge at the girl. Another candidate dropped two rows in front but this time the medics did nothing, instead snapping to attention when someone approached the group from behind. San’s knees threatened to buckle. She remembered a trick her father taught and bent her legs a bit before clenching her thigh and arm muscles, forcing blood back toward her torso and head. The dizziness passed and Sister Mirriam-Ann crept onto a podium at the head of the field, her cane shaking as she climbed the steps; the nun tapped a microphone to make sure it worked.
“When I call your name I want you to load up in the two transports at the edge of the parade field. Double time. Adams. Aders. Adleson.”
The nun read from a list, her soft voice echoing over the parade ground. Wind dried sweat from San’s forehead and provided relief from the agony of standing at attention while names rolled from the woman’s mouth in an avalanche of identities. When she passed the K names without calling hers, San figured they must have her listed under S. But when the nun finished those and moved on to names beginning with T, San’s eyes snapped open and the girl’s stomach tightened.
Sister Mirriam-Ann snapped a portfolio closed and smiled. “At ease.”
San’s shoulders slumped and she moved her feet apart, glancing to either side. One other girl stood nearby. The two were the only ones left on the massive parade field and a breeze picked up, blowing dust across in waves. Sister Mirriam-Ann lowered herself from the podium before she motioned for the two to approach.
“That’s it. You two washed out and may God help you both. What a waste, especially you, Kyarr. Sixteen years of corking into sims and genetic alterations and you still couldn’t get it. You may think that ‘it’s only two of us so how come it’s such a big deal?’ but do the math. You two are Fleet products, not creatures of God. How much did the military spend on you at a time when power, food and materials are priceless?”
San’s face went red with anger. She was about to say something when Sister Mirriam-Ann raised her hand. “Don’t speak; it can only get you in any more trouble than you’re already in, Kyarr.”
“I tried, ma’am.”
The other girl composed herself long enough to speak. “Me too.”
“Trying isn’t the point. Your test answers may be indicative of psychological or neural defects that went undetected. You know the regulations; there are strict rules governing psychiatric cases.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said San.
“Don’t need to call me ma’am anymore, Kyarr. Fleet already out-processed you both administratively so we don’t even need you to sign anything. For the first times in your lives, you’re both private citizens.”
The other girl began sobbing and San fought against doing the same. Private citizen? She’d been Fleet almost from birth and on turning eighteen had re-signed the paperwork making her their property for another ten years. And now, that quickly, she was out? It felt as though someone had stripped her of even a soul and she imagined she stood naked, unprotected and alone; if anything happened, Fleet services wouldn’t—couldn’t—be there to help from now on.
“Daughters,” Sister Mirriam-Ann said. “Don’t lose perspective; you are both Fleet trained and geniuses. There are plenty of private freight companies that will take you on as navigator, pilot—whatever. I’m sure you’ll figure things out eventually.”
An auto-transport whirred onto the parade field, its tracks spitting up dust and soil as it motored straight for the small group; the vehicle stopped a few feet away and the doors swung up on either side, reminding San of wings.
The nun pointed at it. “That’s your ride.”
“That’s it?” the other girl asked, speaking between sobs. “We get an auto-transport—to where? How can you just turn us loose after all we sacrificed?”
Sister Mirriam-Ann was about to respond when a medbot disengaged from the side of the transport and unfolded legs that hummed with electricity. San shivered. She hated the way bots moved under full gravity, with clicking legs that reminded her of colossal insects as they shuffled from place to place, their blinking lights a testament to the soullessness of semi-aware machines.
“No, that’s not it. There’s one last Fleet regulation: We have to vaccinate you both.”
“Vaccinate against what?” San asked. “We’ve already been poked and shot up with everything Fleet can think of.”
“It’s not for you. Over the last day here you’ve been exposed to Fleet personnel who have been in deep space recently, to the far outposts where all sorts of bugs grow. We have to make sure that nobody at home catches anything.”
San rolled up her uniform sleeve. The bot moved toward her and she closed her eyes to avoid having to look, then winced at the needle prick. She gritted her teeth as the fluid burned. The bot finished with the other girl and the pair rolled their sleeves back down.
“Good,” Sister Mirriam-Ann said. “And Fleet thanks you for your service. The transport will take you to the Houston airport, where you’ll be given orders and tickets to get both of you home.”
The nun hobbled away in the direction of the administration buildings while the medbot sauntered, clicking alongside its companion as the old woman talked to it. San couldn’t make out the words until the breeze stopped, when she heard the sister ask how long?
“This isn’t possible,” the other girl said. “And whatever they just injected is burning the hell out of my arm.”
“Mine too. What’s your name?”
The girl looked at the auto-transport and wiped tears from her cheeks. “Stacy Kang. From San Francisco. You?”
“San. San Kyarr. Mars.”
Both girls walked toward the transport and San looked in; a smell of air freshener hit and made her feel nauseous, an odor of pine penetrating her nose and into her brain.
“My dad is going to kill me,” Stacy said.
“Mine’s dead. But my mom won’t be happy at all.”
“At least you have to get to Mars before telling her. Plenty of time to work things out in your head.”
“Time to think. That’s just what I need.”
“Sorry. I didn’t mean it that way.”
Something was bothering San, and she searched until it popped to the surface of her thoughts. “Did Sister Mirriam-Ann say anything to you about evil? An evil within Fleet?”
“No. No, she didn’t. But what does it matter?”
“I always wanted to be involved, to be a part of the fight. With Fleet. I thought I could be one of the good guys. But that idea was stupid. Maybe we’re just kids, after all, and maybe the idea of good fighting evil is outdated.”