Halfway Human Page 2

  She led the way into a small observation room. She closed the door, touched the switch, and the wall became a one-way window into the adjoining room.

  The patient was crouched in a chair in hospital pajamas, knees drawn up to its chest. Val stared, fascinated. The person beyond the glass fit none of her half-formed expectations. She had pictured something eunuchlike and faintly repulsive, but the neuter’s face instead had an androgynous, Greek-sculpture beauty: classic bone structure, long lashes, dark brows under curly golden hair. But now the hair was darkened and matted, the eyes swollen. There was a bandage on the left temple, and the hair around it was singed.

  “It used a gun?” she said softly. She was no mentationist, but to her the violence of the method meant something—a particular hatred of the self, a desire to inflict damage and pain. An attempt to match inner violence with outer, perhaps.

  “Yes,” Joan said. “Good thing its aim was so poor. It could have done real damage to that beautiful face.”

  Val said, “How old is...I feel strange saying ‘it.’”

  “What else can you say? No other word is accurate. If this were one of us, I’d say it’s in its mid-twenties.”

  “Really? That old?” The patient looked younger, but perhaps that was only because Val associated the lack of obvious sexual characteristics with adolescence. “What do you want me to do?”

  “First, I’d like you to talk to it and get me some information. You know what a mentationist is going to want. He’ll take a scan and want to start altering the patient’s mental template. But how can we do that in good conscience when we don’t know what’s normal for this patient? We need to do a little research before jumping in.”

  Val felt a little bubble of excitement rising through her chest. Whatever the thing in the next room was, it clearly represented an unstudied aspect of someone’s culture. This was an opportunity for discovery, maybe even a profitable one.

  In the next room, the figure had moved; now it was pressing its knuckles to its forehead as if to hold in some terrible thought. Val felt a surge of sympathy and alarm invading her scientific detachment. She had never seen a suicidal person before, and the reality dispelled any romantic fantasies she might have had. There was nothing pretty about this. The person in the next room looked to be in almost unendurable pain.

  “I’d feel better if there were a mentationist present,” she said. “What if I do something wrong?”

  “I’ll be here, watching. Bart’s on standby. Don’t worry, Val. You’re a trained interviewer. What can you do wrong?”

  She didn’t dare let Joan know how unprepared she felt.

  “You don’t mind if we record the interview?” Joan said. “We may need to study it.”

  Val restrained herself from asking about copyright. The recording was unlikely to be valuable.

  Joan opened the door to usher Val into the corridor. She took out an access card and slid it into the slot. The door clicked open; Val took a long breath and stepped through.

  As she entered, the patient rose quickly to face her, keeping the chair between them, as suspicious and edgy as a trapped animal. For a moment the two of them stood motionless, staring at each other. Val forced her voice into a friendly tone to say slowly, “Hello. My name is Valerie Endrada. You can call me Val.”

  “Are you here to drug me?” the neuter asked. Its voice was somewhere between alto and tenor, and full of strain. But what struck Val was the incongruous accent: not just a plain Capellan accent, but the cultivated accent of the intellectual elite, the kind of people you called “magister.” She felt a moment of disorientation. Was she talking to someone found half-dead in a squalid alley, or to a colleague?

  “No,” she said. “I’m not a mentationist.”

  “Tell them I don’t want any more drugs,” the neuter said. “I can’t think when I’m drugged. I’ve got to be able to think.” One hand rose to its forehead, then flinched away when it touched the bandage. The evidence of what it had done seemed to repulse it.

  Val heard her voice drop into the cadence she used with Deedee. “The drugs are only to make you feel better.”

  “Why do they have to give me drugs at all?” the patient said in a low, agitated voice. “What use is it, forcing me to feel this way? Are they just trying different psychoactives to see how I’ll react? Is this an experiment?”

  “They’re giving you drugs because you tried to kill yourself,” Val said.

  For a moment it stared at her, as if shocked to hear the news. Then some thought or memory crossed its face and it looked upward, teeth clenched, drawing a ragged breath. Softly, almost to itself, it said, “Why does anyone care about that? What can it matter, one dead bland more or less? Wouldn’t it just be simpler to get rid of me?” It turned away then, and with its back to her wiped the tears from its eyes with its hands. After a moment, it looked back and saw Val’s dismayed expression; then another emotion swept across its face—guilt, this time. Quickly it said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it. Please don’t listen. It’s the drugs, they make me babble. I barely know what I’m saying.”

  “That’s all right, you can’t offend me,” Val said. She took a step closer, wishing she could do something. Watching this was agonizing. But the neuter only retreated, hidden behind the wall of paranoia again.

  “Are you here to study me, then?” it said. “Are you a xenologist?”

  Val hesitated, then decided lying was no way to gain a person’s trust. “Yes,” she said. “Now you know my name and who I am, and I don’t know the first thing about you.”

  “You Capellans,” the alien said softly. “You’ve always got to know.”

  “If we’re going to make you feel better, we have to know something about you.”

  “Then you’re not writing your dissertation about me, or something like that?”

  “No.”

  As if barely daring to hope, it said, “You’re not recording this? There are no cameras, or anyone watching?”

  Val felt her face giving her away. The alien’s expression showed betrayal. Desperately, Val said, “It’s not my choice. I’m not in charge. Please believe me, all we want is to help you.”

  “Then why do you watch me like a peep show?” It was barely a whisper.

  “Oh God, what a mess,” Val said, mostly to the watching wall. She was in fathoms over her head. “I’m sorry, this is all wrong. Please forgive me.” She turned to leave.

  “No! Don’t leave me!” the neuter cried out. She turned in time to see the desperation on its face, quickly hidden. It began to pace, talking fast, its hands moving nervously, as if it didn’t know what to do with them. “I shouldn’t be bothered, really. I...I’m not naive, like I used to be. You know, once I had the opportunity to use Epco’s proprietary database, and I did a search for my own name. There were over two hundred articles written about me, all classified, Epco’s property. Two hundred! Even I don’t know enough about me to write that much. Every step I took, every word I said, was being studied, and had been since I got here. You know, it never even occurred to me why they took all those scans and samples every time I went to the clinic for some virus I had no immunity to. Can you believe that? I didn’t even know I was in a zoo. Please don’t think I resent it; I just need to get used to the way you Capellans are. It’s your nature. You don’t mean any harm.”

  The nervous avalanche of words came to a halt. Val was very curious by now. She didn’t want to disturb the alien’s train of thought, so she said, “It would drive me crazy.”

  “Well, you were raised with the expectation of privacy. I don’t have that excuse. The way I grew up, we were never alone. We saw everything about each other. There was no ethic of modesty; that is all a product of sexuality. If I were living back on Gammadis, I would be sleeping every night in a roundroom with dozens of other blands, all in a pile, like mice. I would have all that physical closeness, without any taint of sexuality—just plain humanity. I would fall asleep to the sound of their breath, t
he feel of their skin against mine. Do you realize, I’ve barely been able to touch another person in innocence for twelve years? On my planet, they believe that neuters need to be with their own kind, or they go crazy. Maybe it’s true.”

  During this speech, Val had drawn a little closer. Now she stood, hands at her sides, and said very quietly, “Would you like me to give you a hug?”

  A complex look crossed the alien’s face—part fear, part longing. “No,” it said, drawing back tensely. “Please don’t be offended. It’s not you.”

  “What is it?” she said. She was so close she couldn’t help but notice again the alien’s striking beauty. In some ways, its vulnerability only heightened the effect. She wanted to hold it as she would Deedee, to lay its head on her shoulder and stroke its hair, to feel the panic subside.

  “I’m sorry,” the alien said. “You’ve got to understand how hard it is for me, to live in a gendered world. I have to be so careful. Sexuality is always present, with you. It never leaves your minds. It’s as if you exist in a cloud of pheromones I can’t sense, but only guess at. I have to be on my guard all the time, thinking of hidden meanings, body language, and innuendoes. I can never assume I understand you, never take anything at face value. It all has to go through a gender-filter in my brain. I wish I could get away from it, just be able to relax, be in a completely nonsexual situation, just for a day. I don’t suppose I’ll ever be able to, for the rest of my life....You don’t want to know all this. These drugs make me babble.”

  Once more, Val had the disorienting feeling that she was talking to another magister, or at least to someone of formidable—though currently scrambled—intelligence. “I do want to know,” Val said. “But please tell me something first. You’re from Gammadis?”

  “Yes. How did you know?” As soon as the words were out of its mouth, the neuter shook its head. “Of course you know. You only have to look at me to know.”

  “I know because you said so,” Val said calmly. “It surprises me, because that planet has been off-limits to Capellans for sixty-three years.”

  “I came here before that.”

  Val smiled skeptically. “You don’t look that old.”

  “It’s a fifty-one light-year trip.”

  That, at least, rang true. Any lightbeam traveler would not have aged during the journey. “You must have been very young when you set out,” she said.

  “I was seventeen.”

  “What’s your name?”

  The alien’s eyes fell to the ground, as if in shame. “Tedla Galele,” it said indistinctly.

  “I’m glad to meet you, Tedla.” Val held out her hand. The alien’s arms were crossed protectively; it hesitated, then finally held out a hand. They shook formally. After touching her, Tedla turned away and walked numbly across the room till stopped by the wall, then stood leaning against it, cheek resting on the cool ceramoplast.

  “Can you get me out of here?” it asked. “I hate this room. It’s driving me crazy.”

  “Not unless you have somewhere to go. Do you have any family, or someone we could contact?”

  Tedla stared at its feet. “No. I’m the only one.”

  “Where have you been living?”

  “Out there,” the neuter gestured vaguely. “The money’s all gone, you know.” A current of agitation welled up again, and it said, “I wasn’t supposed to have to protect myself, or make decisions, or compete with you. That was the promise. People were going to take care of me. Now I have to act human, but I can never be human. If only I could go back! If I were at home I would know exactly what was expected of me. I could live my life surrounded by others of my own kind. Here, I’m nothing...Oh god, why can’t I shut up?”

  Its hands had begun to shake. It clasped them tightly together, making a visible effort to gain control.

  On an impulse, Val reached out and took the neuter’s hands in hers. She half expected it to pull away, but instead it grasped her hands tightly. Its eyes were closed now. In a whisper, it said, “I feel like there is something I ought to be doing, only I don’t know what it is, and I probably wouldn’t be able to do it anyway. But if I don’t, something terrible is going to happen, but it’s hopeless, I can’t prevent it. It’s already happened, it’s who I am. There’s nothing I can do, absolutely nothing.”

  “Shh,” Val said, stroking its hands. She could feel the tension in them, the stretched tendons and knotty bones. “It’s all right, Tedla. Everything is going to be all right.”

  “There’s nothing out there for me, nothing,” Tedla said. “No home, no life that fits me. I’m a piece from a different puzzle. I don’t fit anywhere.”

  “We’ll make a place for you,” Val said. “Don’t worry.”

  Behind her, the door clicked open. Joan entered, carrying a transdermal.

  “No,” Tedla whispered.

  “Tedla doesn’t want any more drugs,” Val said.

  “It’s just a sedative,” Joan said to Tedla, “to calm you down. That’s all, I promise.”

  The neuter just looked at her in terror.

  “Don’t you want to feel a little calmer, Tedla?” Val asked. “Come on, it’ll help you think.”

  Slowly, Tedla held out its arm. With a quick, practiced motion Joan pressed the hypo against the vein. “Why don’t you sit down now?” she said in an encouraging, doctor-to-patient voice. She gave Val a significant look, and nodded toward the door.

  “I’ll be back in a second, Tedla,” Val said, and followed Joan out.

  In the hall, Joan turned to say, “Good work, Val. All we need now is to find someone looking for a missing Gammadian.”

  For a brief moment, Val hoped there wasn’t anyone. She wanted this find all to herself. Her conscience immediately censored the thought. “Of course,” she said. “This shouldn’t be hard. There are probably ‘missing’ notices all over X-O Net.”

  Joan’s office was a tiny cubbyhole cluttered with printouts and mementoes of former patients. Val had to restrain herself from wiping the dust from the screen as she sat down at the terminal.

  After tapping into X-O Net, she ran a search for anything posted in the last five days with the key words “Tedla Galele,” then sat back to wait. When the terminal beeped, she was surprised to see it had turned up nothing.

  “That’s odd,” she said.

  “Expand the search,” Joan suggested.

  She did, but with no better results.

  “What about all those articles in the Epco files?” Joan said.

  “If they’re proprietary, we’d need to pay a fortune. But some of them must have leaked out into public domain. I’ll check.” This time, the screen responded with two citations to articles on Gammadian physiology, both ten years old. “Well, at least now we know Tedla really exists,” Val said, and hit the key to access the first one. The screen responded, “Classified proprietary: Western Alliance Corporation. Please input access code.” Val tried Joan’s number, then her own, but both were rejected. She went back and tried the second article, with the same result.

  “Did it say WAC?” Joan asked, looking over her shoulder.

  “Yes. Not Epco. Maybe Tedla was confused about which infocompany.”

  “Or maybe they both have buckets of classified information.”

  Val clicked her thumbnail against her teeth, thinking. “Actually, WAC makes more sense than Epco,” she said. “I think the original expedition to Gammadis was sponsored by WAC. It would make sense if they were keeping tabs on Tedla.”

  “Should we ask them?”

  Val shook her head. “They don’t give out anything cheap. Let’s try the public-service sources first. Isn’t there some sort of missing persons list?” So Val embarked on a search. But as time passed, she came to dead end after dead end. No one of Tedla’s name or description had been reported missing. Tedla had no listed number or address anywhere on Capella Two. No one of that name had ever registered to vote, or owned taxable property. It had no professional license, no credit history, a
nd no infonet account. They turned up a variety of other Galeles, including one with a criminal record and another who had been expelled from UIC, but no trace of Tedla.

  “We’ve got an invisible person,” Val said.

  “Or someone who’s been hidden,” Joan said suspiciously.

  Val thought briefly of posting a Found notice, but decided it would violate Tedla’s privacy. The fact was, she wasn’t entirely disappointed by her failure: The longer it took to track down where the alien belonged, the longer she would have with it.

  From down the hall, she heard Deedee’s voice raised in play. She checked the time, and groaned. “We were supposed to be at the beach half an hour ago.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll call E.G. and tell him we’re hung up. Keep working on it, Val. I can’t keep Tedla here much longer. Legally, I have to transfer every client home or to a curatory within twenty-five hours. I’d rather not put this patient at the mercy of the public health system. That’s hard enough to negotiate if you know how.”

  Joan left the room, and Val sat thinking. There was something here that didn’t add up. The disastrous end to the Gammadian expedition had happened a dozen years ago. She had been in her teens, but still could remember the near-universal outrage when the explorers had returned from their fifty-one-year trek back, expelled by the rulers of Gammadis for their attempt to interfere in the local culture. Already then, Val had wanted to be an explorer herself. She hadn’t been able to imagine how they had squandered the opportunity, the only one in two centuries.

  But she could not remember any whisper of a Gammadian having come back with them.

  Abruptly, she got up and went back down the hall to Tedla’s room.

  Tedla was crouched in the chair, the way Val had first seen it; but this time the Gammadian didn’t stir at her entrance, merely followed her with its eyes. She sat down facing it.

  “Tedla, I need to know more about you,” she said.