Eternity Row (48 page)

Acting on instinct, I ran to an injured female, then jumped back as my hands passed right through her.

“Sweetheart, I should have explained-you’re only seeing recorded memory patterns. You can’t do anything for them.”

I watched the raiders taking captives and dragging them off to huge star vessels designed to hold thousands of slaves. “They’re not even trying to escape.”

“Why should they? We wanted them to come and get us.” Maggie gently put a hand under my chin and closed my mouth. “The raiders didn’t understand why we wouldn’t fight back, but they got over it fast enough. Never look a gift slave in the mouth.”

I stopped watching the raid. Unreal or not, I couldn’t stand seeing those brutes dragging the not-so-helpless Jxin to their ships. “Why would you want to be slaves?”

“We didn’t feel like building our own ships. All the alloy and laying power conduit and creating light-speed propulsion-too boring for words.” She covered a yawn with her hand. “They wanted slaves; we needed serious transportation. Simple as that.”

I was starting to get a headache. “That makes absolutely no sense.”

“We had better things to do, Joey. Wherever we’ve lived, we leave something behind. Repositories, like the one I showed you. Sometimes only the structures that housed them-what you call ruins-with some interesting stuff chiseled in the stone. A couple of artifacts here and there-only our garbage, really, but it wouldn’t do to leave functional items where you kids could play with them.”

“What did you expect we’d do with this stuff?”

“We figured if anyone ever evolved enough to tolerate exposure or decipher our graffiti, what we left would help them with future changes. In the case of your reality, however, we knew we had to do a little more than leave our trash behind.”

I gnawed my bottom lip. “Why do I get the feeling you’re leading up to what happened to me?”

“You’re a bright girl.”

I wasn’t so sure of that. “Go back to the part where you became slaves so you could travel. To where?”

“Anywhere with a viable species to be developed-a species evolved enough to own slaves. Lots of those up there.” She gestured to the sky. “Being sold and taken to other worlds gave us the access we needed. Once we had settled on a planet, we began our real work.”

Putting it together didn’t take a genius. A powerful, superior species, spreading themselves across a galaxy they couldn’t stay in. Why else would they waste their time? “You seeded the native DNA with your own.”

“Bingo.” She produced a cigarette, lit it, and blew out some smoke before giving me a singularly sweet smile. “But we went a little further than that, baby. We created you.”

Hearing my darkest suspicion confirmed wasn’t as bad as I’d thought. I didn’t want to tear out my hair and wail to the heavens for being the result of an alien conspiracy.

I wanted to knock her on her ass.

Absently, I noticed we were back in the Jxin repository, and the wall devices were still whirring and vibrating away. “Then Joseph had nothing to do with my creation, and you only worked for him to get access to the DNA you needed.”

“Actually, I took advantage of his primitive progress, as it was convenient for my purposes.”

“What about my brothers?”

She lifted a brow. “What about them?”

“Did you do them, too?”

“Ah, no. They were all his work, not mine.” She smirked a little. “Which is why they were all failures.”

I let out a bitter laugh. “You weren’t helping him at all. You were competing with him.”

“Please, Joseph? He never had a chance. All I got from him were the raw materials, and the equipment. You can’t just diddle with a species’ DNA and not expect some flack from the original models, you know.”

I’d never realized it before, but she was as arrogant as Joseph had been. “Why didn’t you just skip the test tubes and breed with these species?”

“Do you have any idea what a crossbreed between a multidimensional life-form and a corporeal would turn out like? Not that we even considered it.” She snorted. “No offense, Cherijo, but humanoids to us are like the Date from Hell That Never Ends.”

“Right.” I suppressed the urge to slap her. With effort. “So you put a few surprises in the gene pool. How did you manage to cross whatever barrier there is between our life-forms?”

“We discovered by experimenting with the raiders that we could alter the native DNA by injecting select chromosomes from our corporeal selves into a developing fetus.” She went to one of the walls, and tapped something. A three-dimensional projection of a Hsktskt soldier appeared between us. “These guys are descendants of the original bus drivers we used to get off Jxinok.”

“Bravo.” Not even the Hsktskt had been safe from tampering. “And you’re still doing this?”

Maggie threw back her head and laughed. “Oh, honey. I’m sorry, but the look on your face is just priceless. No, we’re not ‘doing it’ anymore. I was the last to leave. There aren’t any of us left in this reality.”

I felt like tapping my foot. “So how long until more super-physicians start popping up all over the galaxy?”

“There’s a little more of a time line involved.” Maggie fiddled with the wall again. “Let me show you what Terra looked like when I was captured by the pre-Hsktskt.”

The room around us melted away, and we returned to the darkness. Stars began popping out around us, and in the distance I saw a star in the final stages of formation.

“That’s Sol,” she said, then turned and pointed to a swirling mass of dust solidifying in space. “And that’s your homeworld.”

“You’re telling me you witnessed the formation of Terra.”

“Uh-huh.”

I watched time speed up as the planet became whole. “Was Reever right about the subliminal thing?”

She smiled. “He does have some bright moments.”

“You never implanted anything in my head. I’m communicating interdimensionally with you.” I should have slapped her before, now I wanted to pound her head into something. “Where the hell are you, anyway?”

“The place seriously defies description, baby. Its pathways are very similar in structure to the synaptic thought patterns of your brain.” She patted my cheek. “We can talk any time you like, now.”

My headache swelled to new, hammering intensity. “If you became a slave when Terra was forming, then I know who you are.”

“Taa-daa!” She stepped back and bowed low. “The one, the only, the fabled founding race.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN Housekeepers

We returned to Jxinok, to walk through the forest around the now-smoldering ruins of the crystal city. I had a lot of questions, and for once, Maggie seemed only too happy to answer them.

“What about the blood disorder you supposedly died from?”

“Faked it.” She yawned and examined her fingernails. “Well, not really faked it. My cellular cohesion had deteriorated to the point that it really looked like my blood was rotting. The real challenge was altering the tissue and blood samples so all those doctors your father made me see didn’t freak out.”

I wouldn’t remind her what watching her die had put me through; my pride wouldn’t let me. Still, superior life-form or not, Maggie needed some sensitivity training. “How many planets did you hit in my galaxy?”

“By the time the Tagbno-that’s what the Hsktskt used to call themselves-got through selling us, we bounced around as much as we could.” She started counting on her fingers by the hundreds, then tossed up her hands. “I don’t know, three, four hundred thousand worlds. It was fun, spending all those millennia moving from planet to planet and discovering new species.”

“I’ll bet.” I did a quick mental tally on the number of explored, populated quadrants within the galaxy. Adding what I estimated was still out there to be discovered, I concluded that she and her DNA-happy species had likely meddled with most of the inhabited planets in existence. “You ended up on Terra when?”

“I think it was the fifteenth-no, sixteenth century. I wasn’t sold to your species. I escaped this really dreary little drift-colony as it passed by Terra.” She made a rude sound with her lips. “Then all I had to do was sit back and wait for you to get over the Black Death, the Renaissance, and the Industrial Revolution.”

I’d already seen a few holes in her story-epic and grandiose as it was-but decided to push her on a few more points. “What about the other Jxin? No one had a problem with this plan? No one objected to it? You were all in agreement?”

“We’re not like you, squabbling like mammals, honey. We knew we only had a few million years to play with. What else was there to do, but modify what looked promising and watch them grow?”

I could think of a few things. “So you picked Joseph Grey Veil as one of your victims.”

“One humanoid is as good as another. I needed the correct political situation.” She shrugged. “When I discovered Joseph was trying to crack the genetic limitations of your species, I knew he was the Terran I’d been waiting for.”

“So you came to work for him, and switched me for whatever he was working on.” I thought of what Jericho had told me-that I had eight more clone-brothers scattered around the galaxy out there-and wondered if she’d tampered with their development, too, no matter what she claimed. “Why did you make me female?”

“Oh, that was his idea. I only added some Jxin DNA to his experiment and corrected his mistakes. You were special, little girl. I couldn’t let him muck it up.”

But she had no problem with watching him ruin the lives of eight little boys. “Why? Why am I special? Just because you and I share some cellular material that you couldn’t hold on to?”

“I worked with what I could get.” She shrugged. “My kind would have done a lot more if we’d been able to stick around another hundred billion years, but you know how time flies when you’re trying to stay solid.”

“You said I can’t die. Is that true?”

“For the most part. Oh, you can kill yourself by tossing your body into a star, or staying immersed in molecular acid, but aside from that, you’re immortal.”

We were finally getting to the part I needed to know. “There’s a reason you needed me to live forever, right?”

“Right.” She bent over, plucked a blue flower, and handed it to me. “You’re going to continue the work.”

“Your work?”

“Not exactly. It’s more a housekeeping job.”

I laughed. “A what?”

“We can’t come back and fix anything that breaks, Joey. And given the possibilities with the modified species, well”-she rolled her eyes-“somebody had to take the job. So while we were out there founding all these new species, we also created some very special kids, like you.”

Kids. Not kid. “To clean up your trash?”

“Sometimes. Mostly you’ve got to do what you were trained to be-a doctor. Make some house calls, or rounds, or whatever you want to call it. You’ve got to monitor what happens on these worlds.”

“That isn’t housekeeping. That’s baby-sitting.”

“Works for me. But if it makes you feel better, just think of how you heal the sick and injured, and apply that on a galactic scale. Voilà, instead of one patient, you get to treat millions.”

“I can hardly wait.” I was nearly finished. I just needed a little more information. “How do I do that, exactly?”

“You’re already doing it, baby.” She tucked another blue flower in my hair. “Identify problems like the one Dhreen’s people are having, go in, gently manipulate certain aspects of it-you’ll know which ones as you run into them-and preserve as many of our seeded species as you can.”

“And that’s it? That’s the whole job?”

“Well, if any promising new species crops up out of some primordial sludge, you’ll need to introduce Jxin DNA to their gene pool.” She made a casual gesture with one hand. “Just to keep all the humanoids on the same page.”

“Do I get any retirement? Or do I turn into a big glow somewhere down the road?”

“Your native DNA assures you won’t suffer our fate-it prevents you from making the final transcencion.” She kissed me on the brow. “You’re going to do a great job, I know it.”

“I’m positive I would,” I assured her, “if I bought your sad little story.”

Superior life-forms don’t rattle easily, I discovered.

“Sweetie, what are you saying? Haven’t I explained it right?”