Price of Ransom (27 page)

This dispassionate attack took Lily off guard. She could not stop herself from a brief, wry chuckle. “I don’t claim it. I am.”

“I hope we are speaking about the same person.”

“Kyosti Bitterleaf Hakoni. Also known as Hawk. I don’t know if he went by any other names. At one time part of the saboteur network that fought in your war with the Empire.”

“
My
war?”

“We’re not from League space, doctor. Until a year ago, I didn’t even know it existed. But that’s another story. Here is an image of how he looked when he was my ship’s chief physician.” She handed a thin com-slate to the doctor.

Dr. Farhad took it without comment and examined it in silence, her lips pursed in concentration. The dusky skin on her face was as smooth as that on her hands, but something in her manner gave away, as it had in Master Heredes, her great age and greater wisdom. The slightly flat features of her eyes and broad cheekbones bore a similarity to Lily’s, suggesting some long-distant common ancestry. “Yes, it is Kyosti,” she said, handing the slate back to Lily. Her use of the name surprised Lily: everyone else she knew, even those who had known him before, called him Hawk. Dr. Farhad sat back in her chair, hands reclasped in her lap, and regarded Lily shrewdly. “Why are you here? What do you want?”

“I want him back.”

The doctor’s composure remained unruffled by this outburst. “Let me ask you a few questions, Captain. How long have you known Kyosti?”

Lily shook her head. “Let me see. About two and a half years.”

“How long have you been lovers?”

“As long. Within a week, about.”

“It is unlikely, to say the least, that he would have acted so quickly, or given in to your interest so soon.”

Lily smiled, wry again. “He wasn’t conquered by my vast charm, I’m afraid. He did it to get the protection of the man I was traveling with at the time.”

Jenny gasped. “Damn my eyes. The squirrelly bastard.” Yehoshua refrained from comment.

“He was trying to get away from Concord Intelligence,” Lily added.

“Concord Intelligence? I don’t understand. A moment ago you said you weren’t
from
League space.”

“This wasn’t in League space. Surely you know he was in Concord prison for over twenty years, had just gotten out and was taken with an expedition to—” Lily halted. Something she had said had finally gotten a reaction from the doctor.

“Twenty years in Concord prison!” Dr. Farhad’s agitation took the form of unclasping her hands and lifting them to straighten the already immaculate coil of black hair pinned up at the nape of her neck. “I was never informed of this. It is
not
noted in the files I was given last week—” This time, when her lips pursed, her disapproval was evident. “I can assure you, I will be speaking to Rehabilitation about this. That is unconscionable. Now.” The matter was dismissed but clearly not forgotten. She fixed her severe stare on Lily once more. “In the time he has been your lover, have you noticed, any—strange behavior?”

Yehoshua coughed behind his hand. Jenny sighed and looked somber.

“He killed one of my former lovers,” Lily said in a flat voice. “And attempted to murder the second. Luckily I only had two. And I believe I know what precipitated—whatever condition he’s in now. He thought I had been killed. In response—” Coming so calmly, the words took on a surreal aspect to her. She could still see the blood. “—he killed—how many?”

“Fifteen,” said Yehoshua.

“Fifteen people. It was—ugly. He ripped their throats out, just like a je’jiri would.”

“Ah.” The doctor’s expression lightened. “Now I begin to understand. First you must understand, Captain, that you mistake the agency. Je’jiri do not go berserk. Only humans are berserkers. Mix them, and you get a volatile brew, one that, like oil and water, is never soluble. His attachment to you—if you are his mate, as you say—is of necessity bound by his je’jiri ancestry. But such furious violence is all too human. That is why he has retreated into this je’jiri guise.”

“What do you mean?”

Dr. Farhad nodded, making a decision. “I think you will need to see him for yourself. If you will come with me.” She rose. “I can admit only you, Captain. Your associates will have to stay here.”

“Lily—” Jenny began.

“No, Jenny. I’ll go. Go back to the shuttle. I’ll meet you there. I do have one more question. Doctor, you call him Kyosti. Somehow I get the impression that you’ve known him, or of him, before now.”

Dr. Farhad smiled for the first time, but it was a sad smile, touched with irony. “Some fifty years ago, Captain, I was an ordinary social worker in the city of Helsinki, on Prokiya Four. I was called in on the case of an adolescent boy of seventeen who had committed a horrifying series of murders. Father dead, mother unknown, family indifferent. The old story. Until I discovered that he had only been living with his aunt and uncle for six years, and that they had concealed—out of shame—the fact that he was that rarest of things, a half-breed. Instantly I changed my entire treatment of him. My original area of interest was in xenopsychology, but I had never been able to get even an entry-level post in either the public or private sphere. Thus, social work. And now, everything changed. I made a brilliant reputation working with that poor, troubled child. I won a university post, and later graciously accepted a position in Xenopsychology Research here at Concord. Yes, I know Kyosti quite well.” She went to the door, and it opened before her. “Why do you suppose I was called in now?”

T
HEY TOOK ELEVATORS, ONE
long pneumatic tube ride, and finally walked down the only drab corridors Lily had seen in League space to reach secure level 6 of Concord prison. A second tube ride and four seemingly casual checkpoints punctuated the trip. The security here was unobtrusive but thorough. Lily wondered if unseen security scanned and probed them as well. Dr. Farhad remained unconcerned and led her through it all with impressive aloofness. Whatever her origins as an ordinary social worker, she had clearly grown accustomed to the privileges that attend one who gains status as a great mind. It occurred to Lily that the security leading to level 6 was organized solely to keep prisoners in, not—as it would have been in Reft space—to keep visitors out as well.

“You’re quiet,” said Dr. Farhad as they passed through two keyed doors into a large observation room. A single technician turned from the main console and acknowledged their entrance.

“I’m nervous,” Lily admitted, following the doctor forward to a long wall of clear plastine that overlooked a series of small, sparsely furnished rooms.

The first room was empty, the second contained an unfamiliar je’jiri male, and the third. …Her eyes skipped back to the second room.

“It can’t be,” she whispered.

“Oh, it is,” replied Dr. Farhad, cool and composed at her side. “Blood, retina, fingerprints all confirm it.”

Lily knew it with the immediacy of primeval instinct: she was looking at an alien, not a human. He sat, not in a chair or couch, but on a high counter, legs crossed, back straight: just as the je’jiri clan had sat at her conference with the Dai. The set of his shoulders, the tilt of his head, the way his hands held the thin com-slate balanced on one knee, all bore the stamp of an alien musculature. The unruly mop of his hair stood out startlingly blue against his pallor: He was as pale as a ghost, too pale to have human skin. He was no one she knew.

Lily stared. Slowly, painstakingly, she constructed bone and muscle to find an echo of
her
Kyosti, but it was a difficult match. There were certain physical resemblances, purely structural. Any likeness ended there. He sat with the perfect stillness of the hunter, studying the screen.

“It has been difficult to communicate with him,” said Dr. Farhad, jarring Lily out of her scrutiny, “because he only speaks and responds to the je’jiri tongue now. I speak a few phrases, not well—it is a difficult tongue conceptually for us. Of the two specialists who live on Concord, one is currently on assignment and the other has only been available twice for short periods. He was not, in any case, very communicative.”

Lily tore her gaze away from Kyosti—it was too painful to look at him. Dr. Farhad’s curt professionalism was easier to deal with. “Have you tried je’jiri?”

“Yes.” The doctor moved away from the overlook. The technician moved swiftly to let her sit in the chair that, poised in front of a long console, allowing her to observe all three rooms and access an impressive bank of screens and keyboards at the same time. “There is a clan currently in residence here. They agreed to send one male. He arrived and spoke with Kyosti for some time, but when he returned he informed me that there was nothing the je’jiri could do. When Kyosti’s mother sent him to his father’s kin, just before puberty, evidently she severed all clan ties, so that he has in fact no kinship within the je’jiri kin system at all. He was considered by their lights too dangerous—too primitive and violent, if you will—to be allowed into je’jiri society.”

“
They
call
us
violent? After what I’ve seen them do?” And yet, looking out at him, there was a surface edge of serenity to him now that had never existed before, a veneer of calm. She doubted somehow that it ran very deep. “Perhaps I’m beginning to understand why he is trying, however unconsciously, to protect himself by becoming je’jiri.”

“Perhaps you do, at that,” replied the doctor. “However, it is no protection. I thought I had helped him, when he was a boy, to find a balance, to integrate both halves, but it was a makeshift cure, I fear, and one that has clearly disintegrated.”

“When I met him, I think he was trying very hard to be human. To not be je’jiri at all.”

“No better solution. Concord has record of two other cases of half-breeds. One committed suicide at age eighteen. The other died recently after eighty years in a catatonic state. Kyosti has done very well.”

“Very well,” Lily echoed. The statement seemed incongruous to her, seeing this person—this creature—that had somehow inhabited Kyosti’s body. “What happened to him as a boy? Why did his mother send him away? Surely it was a cruel thing to do.”

“Cruel enough. When he spoke of that time, it was with great pain. I think he was well loved there—I could guess that from what he said and how he said it. I can guess—or hope—that it was as painful a parting for his mother as for him. But imagine a human adolescent in je’jiri society. The clan member who visited us here said it bluntly: it would not be tolerated. Thus he was sent to his human kin.”

“To become human,” Lily said bitterly.

“I interviewed them extensively, the aunt and uncle, and grandparents. They meant well. But he was a strange child. His father had died under strange circumstances and had been the black sheep of the family as well. And they had had no inkling that the child even existed—simply had him dumped in their laps. They should have called Social Services at once, of course. But they didn’t.”

She turned back to find refuge in Dr. Farhad’s even expression. “What did he do, at seventeen?”

Dr. Farhad’s smile was sad. “What do you suppose he did? He had sex. No one had prepared him for the consequences. The young woman was three years older than him and healthy enough in her self-esteem to have had two previous lovers. They both died. Evidently she was disturbed enough by his behavior—not knowing, I think, that he had committed the murders—that she stopped seeing him and began a relationship with a new partner. As we reconstructed it afterward, it was the new partner who figured out the connection. This young man was not a pleasant character. Kyosti tracked them down and the young man killed the woman, thinking it would save his life. Of course it didn’t. Originally it was thought that Kyosti had murdered the woman as well—”

“He would never have!”

“No, so we discovered.” Dr. Farhad’s eyes gleamed as she examined Lily in the subdued light of the observation room. “I’m beginning to think you are indeed what you claim to be.”

“So you were called in.”

“Yes. He did try to kill himself twice afterward. I worked with him for several years. Eventually he was deemed stable enough to begin to attempt to live in the world again. I encouraged him to study medicine.”

“
You
encouraged him—?”

“It fitted his—particular talents. It gave him a sense of purpose, a mission. I was disappointed when he joined the saboteur’s network. I never thought it a job conducive to mental health. But his parole board approved, and it was his choice.”

“He had another lover there,” said Lily, and then lapsed into quiet, remembering the story Kyosti had told her—it seemed so long ago—at Bleak House Station. How his lover had slept with his best friend to see if it was true that he would have to kill any man she slept with. “But I think she abused him, abused the relationship. She died, at Betaos.”

“At Betaos? The famous engagement? They used to say that the blue-hair physician killed an entire chameleon—excuse me, Kapellan—battalion single-handed. One of those exaggerated legends that grow up.”

“I’m not so sure,” Lily replied, slow. “She died there. He could have done it, if he’d gone berserk. I’ve seen what he can do, under similar circumstances. I don’t like to remember it.”

Dr. Farhad tapped a message into one of the keyboards, and a file came up on a screen. “I see I have a great deal to fill in. Which reminds me, what more do you know about his term in Concord prison? I am deeply disturbed to hear of it. It should never have happened, not with his psychological profile.”

“Other than that it was about twenty years—No. He told me once he’d been in something called sensory.”

“Sensory deprivation!” Dr. Farhad lifted her hands to pull at the tight coil of her hair, lowered them once again to tap furiously into the keyboard. “That’s the worst possible treatment they could have subjected him to!” She seemed to be talking more to herself than to Lily. “It would be
torture
. Nothing better than torture.” She checked the screen, but whatever she wanted evidently did not come up. She resumed typing. “I’ll have their heads for this. Absolutely against procedure. Unforgivable.” She subsided into incomprehensible muttering.