[Shadowrun 05] - Changeling Read online

  His father came and knelt beside him, beginning to probe and poke at Peter’s skin with his hands.

  Peter heard his father mutter something under his breath—“Goblinization.” Then he heard him say out loud, “I’ll be right back. I’ve got to call an ambulance.”

  His father left him.

  Peter woke with a violent gasp, confused for a moment, and then aware of his surroundings. He looked around. An orderly sat in a chair in one corner of the room, watching the flatscreen on the wall. The screen showed an image of buildings on fire. The words “LIVE from Seattle” and “Racial Violence” floated over the pictures. In front of the buildings crowds of pure humans were throwing bottles and rocks at the elves and dwarfs and trolls and orks who were trying to escape the fires. Police in riot gear shot tear gas into the crowds. The gas dispersed groups of pure humans, but blocked the escape of the metahumans.

  “What’s happening?”

  The orderly turned to look at Peter, then stood up slowly and walked to the bed.

  A warning clicked in Peter’s head. The man was dangerous. He didn’t know how he knew, only that the danger was real. With subtle tugs he checked his straps. All were back in place.

  The orderly stood over Peter. “Don’t know for sure. Looks like the city of Seattle rounded up all its metahumans to send them off to camps, but the fragging pintips lit themselves up. There are riots all over the city now.”

  “Oh.”

  “By the way, you really nailed a buddy of mine yesterday.”

  “I didn’t…”

  The orderly slammed his hand down into Peter’s right cheek, which stung with pain. Peter decided that since he couldn’t take action, he wouldn’t say any-thing. He’d let things blow over. Let the man get it out of his system.

  The orderly punched him again, the pain digging deeper this time.

  When the orderly pulled back for the third blow, Peter tried to jerk his head away, but the other man compensated and hit him in the same spot for a third time.

  “Stop…. Please.”

  “Why should I, you stupid trog.”

  “You don’t understand. I just changed into a troll. I used to be normal.”

  The orderly raised his fist. Peter jerked away and the orderly grinned down at him, proud of his trick. “Don’t make no difference to me, chummer. You’re a troll and you act like a troll.”

  Peter wanted to ask, “And what are you acting like?” but kept his mouth shut.

  The doctor appeared in the doorway, where he’d stopped, startled by the scene in Peter’s room. “I told you to call me as soon as he woke up.”

  “Sorry, Doc.”

  “Is everything all right?”

  “Oh, sure. Me and the patient…”

  “I wasn’t talking to you.”

  “Yes,” said Peter. “Everything is fine.”

  The orderly walked to the flatscreen and turned it off.

  “Please leave us alone,” the doctor said wearily.

  Moving obediently toward the door, the orderly stepped behind the doctor and caught Peter’s eye. He held a finger before his lips and then mimed a punch into his open palm. Then he was gone. Again, Peter decided to hold his tongue.

  “Peter, we must talk,” said the doctor.

  “All right.”

  “What happened yesterday… It does happen in cases like yours. But you must control your anger. You are much stronger than you realize. You cannot afford to lose your temper.

  “Now, I understand you’re under a lot of stress, but that can’t be an excuse. The world still fears people like you. It will take time for things to work themselves out.”

  “There are riots in Seattle.”

  “Yes.”

  “What makes you think it will work itself out?”

  The doctor smiled down at Peter. “You’re probably wiser than I, but I cling to my faith.”

  “When can I go home?”

  “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about, Peter. You’re being discharged tomorrow. Your father has secured an out-patient therapist who will help you get used to your body. He’s one of the best in the world, actually—”

  “What do you mean, get used to my body?”

  “Peter, you’re hundreds of kilos heavier than when you arrived. You’re head and shoulders taller. You haven’t used your muscles for weeks. It will take time.”

  “What about how I think?”

  “Think?”

  “What about how I think?” He remembered the orderly punching him. “And my anger. You said I can’t afford to get angry. But what if I am angry? What if I’m angry about being a troll? Because I’m not a troll, and it makes me angry that I look like one.”

  “Listen to me! This is very important. Do you remember about DNA—about genetics?”

  Peter searched his memory, becoming more and more frustrated. It was bad enough knowing he had forgotten so much. It was even worse to be quizzed so that his lost memories could be catalogued.

  But then he did remember something about DNA.

  “It’s like a code, isn’t it? Letters all strung together. They spell a person, right?” Then he felt very stupid, for he knew there were no letters in a person; a person wasn’t spelled out like a sentence. “I’m sorry. I’m not sure where…”

  “No, no. That’s good. It’s inaccurate, but you’re on the right track. We think of DNA as a code. A code with four letters. The letters are based on the four nitrogenous bases that are in the DNA: A for adenine, G for guanine, C for cytosine, and T for thymine. The four letters are arranged in different combinations and different lengths to make up a gene. There might be tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands, or even millions of these letters defining a single gene. It goes like this: GCATGTATCCTGTA and so on.”

  Peter got excited. He could taste the memory of the idea, and wanted to swallow it down whole. “And genes, what are they again?”

  “Genes are… They define the aspects of a person. They define the color of your hair, the size of your skull. They make sure you have blood in your body. They define your skin color.”

  “Yes! I remember some of it now. And the genes are scattered along chromosomes.”

  “Exactly.”

  In his excitement, Peter tried to get up on his elbows, but the straps held him down. He fell back against the pillow and said, “And?”

  The doctor tried to pick the energy back up. “Well, at me end of the twentieth century we started mapping the code sequences of DNA. Up until then we knew about DNA, but we didn’t know which genes along the code sequence did what. It was called the Genome Project. It was a worldwide effort though much of the work was done by the old United States government. Scientists all over the world studied portions of many human DNA sequences, then compared the results. They found common patterns, and eventually labeled certain parts of the sequence for certain tasks.

  “For example—oh, what was his name? Fajans, at the U. of Michigan, spent thirty-two years following five generations of one family. Several dozen of the hundreds of people he studied had a form of maturity-onset diabetes. Then a geneticist, Bell, waded through the family gene pool, searching for similar areas on chromosomes shared by the family members with diabetes. He found some markers for the diabetes genes, but it was only a beginning. After three and a half years of work, they narrowed the choice of three billion base pairs down to ten million. Good, but not good enough.

  “That’s just one example. Research like this was happening all over the country. I only know about the Bell project because I studied it in school.

  “But when the country broke up, most of the new nations held information back from scientists in other countries. And now corporations hold the information, and they’re even more loathe to share it. It became more difficult to double-check patterns. The Genome Project slowed considerably until just recently.”

  “But they did get a good map of humans, right? Pure humans?”

  “Well, they got a pretty good map.
The problem was that even when the genes were being ‘read,’ there were many genes we didn’t understand. We mapped them, but ignored them. Some we thought were irrelevant by-products of evolution. Others we thought served some function, such as regulating the expression of the genes, in a way we didn’t understand.”

  “And some of these were the metahuman genes,” Peter said, remembering.

  “Yes. We used to believe that the magic genes were extraneous. Which, in fact, they were, until the magic returned. Or whatever… We don’t really know, but we suspect it was the magic that activated the genes. They were always there, but were inactive, invisible.”

  “So you’re saying that the genes are a part of me. I’m a troll because that’s what my genes read, and I should just accept it.”

  “Yes. This is how the universe wrote you.”

  “But diabetes is a disease, right?”

  The doctor paused, uncertain where Peter’s words were leading. “Yes.”

  “And the reason people investigated it genetically was to find a cure for it, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “To change what had been written…”

  “But diabetes is a disease, Peter. As far as I can tell, you are completely healthy.”

  “What about the rioting in Seattle? Everyone else in the world wouldn’t see me as healthy.”

  “That’s a problem with the world. Not with your body.”

  Peter turned his head away. He couldn’t find the words for what he wanted to say. But his body felt tight, trapped.

  No, something else. He felt tight and trapped inside m alien body. He looked down at the sheet covering tan. That form could not be his body. It was too big, too bulky, too long. Inside the troll body, which was larger than the body of a full-grown pure human, was a fifteen-year-old boy.

  “There’s a tiling on me,” he said. “And I want it off.”

  “Peter. We don’t know how to do that. We can’t manipulate genes yet.”

  A fiery idea warmed him. “I’ll figure it out.”

  “Maybe you will,” the doctor said somewhat sadly, but Peter sensed he wanted to say exactly the opposite. “I have to go now. Your father will be back to pick you up in the morning. Your therapist, too.”

  The doctor turned and left.

  Peter relaxed and settled himself as comfortably as possible while strapped to the bed. It wasn’t for much longer. When morning came, his father would be here to take him home.

  The next morning the doctor bustled into the room, trailed by another man who Peter assumed was the therapist. “Good morning, Peter,” he said, then gestured to the other man. “Peter, this is Thomas. Thomas, Peter.”

  Thomas was a huge man with a broad, round, innocent-looking face, but Peter ignored him, glancing impatiently toward the door, expecting his father to appear next. When that didn’t happen, he waited for someone to tell him why. Maybe his father was merely running a little late. But neither man spoke, apparently waiting for Peter to return the doctor’s greeting. His disappointment was bitter, but Peter buried it deep.

  “Good morning.”

  Thomas stepped over to the bed. “I’ve got it,” he said to the doctor. “Thanks a lot.” With a nod the doctor left the room.

  “How are you doing?” Thomas asked, looking down at Peter.

  “Fine.”

  “Really? I’d expect someone who’s been through what you have to still be a bit off balance.”

  Peter couldn’t decide if he liked the man or not, so he said nothing.

  Thomas leaned down and gently undid Peter’s straps, as if sorry people had treated him in such a manner. After freeing the final strap, he said, “Wait,”

  then picked up Peter’s right wrist, whose gray-green flesh showed a wide band of blue-gray discoloration where the strap had cut into it. Thomas rubbed the flesh with the heels of his palms. Uncomfortable at being touched, Peter tried to pull away, but he lacked full control of his muscles and so ended up jerking his hand so hard it slammed into the rail on the other side of me bed.

  “Relax, relax,” said Thomas. He took Peter’s wrist again and massaged it. The flesh, where Thomas touched it, was growing warmer.

  Peter still felt uncomfortable, but was afraid to move his arm away. Within seconds, however, he gave up all thought of trying to get away from Thomas because the touch of the man’s hands was so soothing. He gave in and let Thomas do his work.

  Thomas raised each of Peter’s limbs and carefully massaged the places where the straps had cut into his flesh. He then pulled back the sheet and began to massage the rest of Peter’s body, working from the neck down.

  Thomas worked quietly, and Peter’s furtive glance at the man showed the therapist completely lost in his task. With sure movements, he forced the tension and pressure further and further down Peter’s body. Peter couldn’t but help close his eyes and savor the feeling.

  Then Thomas asked Peter to roll onto his stomach, but had to help him accomplish the awkward motion. Again, Thomas began at the neck and worked his way down. By the time his hands reached the base of Peter’s spine, Peter was almost purring with pleasure.

  When he was done, Thomas clapped his hands together and said, “All right? Ready to go home?”

  Peter thought he’d rather stay here in the hospital with Thomas’ magic hands than return home. He was angry at his father for not coming, and was afraid of the anger. But he knew he had no choice.

  “You’re coming with me, right?”

  “Yes. Your father set aside a room for me. I’ll be living there with you.”

  Peter felt good about that, but he tried not to reveal his pleasure.

  “So, then, let’s go,” said Thomas. “Time to sit up.” First Peter rolled over onto his back and then he pushed up with his arms. From the other side of the bed, Thomas pushed on Peter’s back, helping to prop him up. Peter felt like a sack of fertilizer.

  When he was finally sitting up, he felt unbalanced. Thomas put out a hand to help steady him.

  “I’m really tall.”

  “You sure are. Put your arms out. Time for you to become an outpatient.”

  Peter raised his arms awkwardly while Thomas undid the ties of the hospital gown and slipped it off. Thomas then opened a green plastic bag and produced a massive T-shirt, underwear, and a pair of shorts. “Special troll size?” Peter asked.

  “Yup. Your father got you a whole wardrobe. The rest of it’s down in my van. Arms up.”

  Thomas slid the shirt over Peter’s head, then said, “Now, rollback.”

  Peter did so, certain he’d never be able to get up again. Thomas slid the underwear and shorts up his legs.

  “All right. Back up.”

  Peter rocked back and forth, but he couldn’t get his stomach muscles to contract hard enough to lift his chest. Thomas crossed around behind the bed and gave a hefty push, and Peter was quickly sitting up again. A shame passed through Peter for being so like a baby, helpless and needy. A fearful idea entered his head: he had no life before him except one thrown to him by others.

  “Wait a minute.” Thomas crossed to the door and stepped out into the hall. When he returned, he was pushing a large wheelchair built of polished silver metal.

  “That for me?” Peter heard fear in his voice.

  “Hospital policy. Until you get outside. You can walk, Peter, but it will be a little hard at first. That’s why I’m here, though. By the time we’re done working together, you’ll be in better shape than before your transformation.”

  The word “transformation”came out of Thomas’ mouth without any awkward inflection. Peter realized that Thomas had been through all this before. He had helped other people who had been pure human one week and another race the next. To Thomas, it was just another part of life. Peter couldn’t imagine seeing it that way.

  Thomas wheeled the chair up to the bed and said, “All right, stand up.”

  Peter slid off the edge of the bed. Sooner than expected, his feet touched the floo
r. He tried to raise himself to a standing position, but was afraid. He didn’t know where his balance was; his limbs felt like they belonged to someone else. “I can’t. I can’t move.”

  “Yes. Relax. Yes, you can.” Thomas came over and put his arm around Peter’s shoulders. “All right, here we go. Ready? One… two… three.” Thomas pushed on Peter’s back again, and Peter tried once more to lift himself. With Thomas’ help, he got to his feet.

  Peter looked down at Thomas, who looked up at him and smiled. “Hey, big fella.”

  “I’m huge.”

  “And still not fully grown yet.”

  “No?”

  “Trolls can reach three meters.”

  Peter laughed in spite of himself. “The doctor says I’m not a troll,” he said.

  “Some people can’t see the truth if they can’t measure it. When it’s all done, Peter, you’ll figure out what to call yourself. But, me, I’m going to call you a troll. All right, into the chair.”

  Thomas helped Peter pivot his back to the chair, and Peter placed his hands on the armrests. As he started to sit down, however, he felt the floor slide to the left. Suddenly, without warning, his body leaned forward, desperately overcompensating. Looking down, he saw the gray tiles of the floor rushing up toward his face. His mind locked in despair as the floor filled his vision. The next moment he smacked into the ground.

  Thomas knelt beside him, one hand on Peter’s back. “Are you all right?”

  Peter wanted Thomas out of the room. He didn’t want anybody to see him like this, unable to move, to walk. “I don’t want to go,” he said quietly.

  “What?”

  “I don’t want to go home. I don’t want my father to see me like this. I don’t want the world to see me like this. I don’t want to leave.” Peter spread his fingers across the floor as if he might dig his strong nails into it if Thomas tried to make him leave.

  “Peter, you fell. That’s going to happen. Gravity’s always pulling everyone down. That’s part of the contract. You get to stay on the planet, full of air, food, and water, and it drags you down.”

  Peter turned his face up toward Thomas. “What the hell’s that?”