Nye, Jody Lynn - Medecine Show

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Jody Lynn Nye - Medicine Show

Medicine Show

Jody Lynn Nye

If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as

"unsold and destroyed" to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this

"stripped book."

This book is an Ace original edition, and has never been previously published.

MEDICINE SHOW

An Ace Book / published by arrangement with the author

PRINTING HISTORY

Ace edition / August 1994

Cover art by Peter Peebles.

This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission.

For information address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

200 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016.

ISBN: 0-441-00085-1

ACE®

Ace Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,

200 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016.

ACE and the "A" design are trademarks belonging to Charter Communications, Inc.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

10 987654321

To the Friends of the Rain Forest You know who you are!

PROLOGUE

Field Director Missa Volk stared over her lab table at Edrad Dennison when he burst into her hut,

waving a sheaf of documents. The quondam main office of the LabCor field research unit was strewn

with datacubes and tapes, amidst imperfectly squared pillars of plastic printout sheets. Moving with

remarkable grace for such a big man, Dennison threaded his way hastily through them to thrust a

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Jody Lynn Nye - Medicine Show

handful of documents at her, .narrowly avoiding upsetting one of those pillars. Uneasily, she took the

papers.

"Here!" Dennison exclaimed. "You wanted proof. Here it is. Our marvelous experiment to benefit

humanity—all warm-blooded creatures—has all gone horribly wrong. I told you so, dammit, and you've

paid no attention. But now I have evidence. You must pay attention to that." He smacked the top of the

sheaf with a huge hand.

Volk eyed him warily, then glanced over the top sheet of the report. In a very patient voice, she said,

"You've made a mistake, Dennison. There's nothing wrong here."

"Nothing wrong?" Dennison asked, disbelievingly, his wiry eyebrows nearly touching in the center of

his face. "Look at that." Leaning forward, he flipped the first page out of her fingers and pointed to the

second. Volk recoiled from his thrust, then read the paragraphs he indicated. "I've supplied full

calculations. I've given you charts, figures, again and again. There are significant discrepancies between

our projections and the actual results. It is no mistake. The nanomites have approximately double the

effectiveness we estimated, and are running completely out of control. We've got to stop every-thing to

search out and destroy the ones that have gotten away. What happens when they reproduce?"

"Nonsense," Volk said lightly. She handed back the sheets, waving away the suggestion of discrepancy

with her long, slim hand. "Everything is perfectly under control, Ed. In fact, I'm pleased with the

progress we've been making."

"What?" Dennison stared at her.

"You heard the director," said Morganstern, a man of medium height with a powerful stocky build and

deep tan skin that made him look as if he were made of polished teak. He leaned forward over the table.

"There's nothing to clean up or fix."

"No," Dennison insisted. "We have to…" His booming voice trailed away and he stared. "You're

stonewalling me, Missa. This is a dangerous matter. You can't just let this go. We have to get help from

somebody, now!"

Volk stood up. Dennison, towering above her, seemed somehow less substantial a being. "Ed," she said,

long suffering evident in her voice, "do you want to jeopardize our grant? We'll never reach the next

contract stage with LabCor if we start making waves about something that just isn't that important."

Dennison gaped. "Is that all you can think about, money? In that case, I'll have to go to the Inspectors

General myself."

"You can't," Morganstern protested, shocked.

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Jody Lynn Nye - Medicine Show

"I will." The scientists glared at one another across the table. Volk was the only one who looked calm.

"Ed, Lionel, please. Don't you believe in our project? When we started out, you were one of the most

energetic supporters we had. Don't deprive us of your help."

"I don't care what else you say," Dennison said, crossing his arms across his chest. "It isn't going the way

we planned. Things have changed. We have to report this situation to the Galactic Environmental

Protection Association and LabCor and ask for help. You can't let this project run out of control. People

will die if you do."

"People will die if we don't continue with our work," Missa Volk said. "They die every day. You know

that. Isn't it part of the problem?"

"Yes, but this time it's going to be us! And what about the rest of the colony? And the ottle population?

We're visitors on their planet."

Missa Volk narrowed her green eyes at him. "You'll do what I tell you, Ed. Everything is fine, under

control. You step outside this group with classified information and I'll see to it that you never create a

more significant chemical reaction than mixing baking soda with vinegar. I am in charge of this project!"

"Then do something!" Dennison exclaimed. He pounded the table with a fist. Volk stared at his hand.

"Dammit, people will die if you let it run unchecked. Here, I've documented all the instances where

human subjects have been exposed to over-doses of the nanomites. You've seen for yourself what's

happening to them. Don't pretend you haven't."

Volk eyed him coolly. "And just what is it you want me to do?"

"Stop the project," Dennison said flatly. "Withdraw the remaining doses, isolate the ones we know

about, and start policing the area for any leaks where the natives might have been exposed."

"Out of the question," Morganstern spoke up. "LabCor will be sending an inspection squad out here

within the month. We can't risk any appearance of impropriety."

"Impropriety?" Dennison exploded. "Look, if you're not going to do something, I will. I'll blow the

whistle."

"How dare you?" Morganstern demanded. Volk grabbed her assistant's arm.

"No," she said to Dennison. "You do what you have to do. If you feel that you'd rather jeopardize the

grant for fifteen of your fellow scientists, destroy our project, our careers and standing in the research

community—our dreams—you go right ahead."

"You're damned right I am going ahead," Dennison said, and strode with much dignity out of the hut.

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"What are you doing?" Morganstern asked Volk in a harsh whisper. "He'll be on the net in two minutes,

pulling down a medical inspector. We can't afford exposure. Our contract calls for absolute

confidentiality…"

"Don't worry," Volk said. "I saw this coming. Hampton tipped me off days ago that Ed was getting edgy.

I have already anticipated his attempts to send a message to the Galactic

Government. The lines are cut off and they'll remain off until I'm good and ready to restore them."

"And after that? We need those comm lines, too. He can wait a day or two before bringing chaos down

on our heads."

"After that?" Volk said grimly, her lips pressed together. "Dennison won't be in any shape to send a

message." She raised her eyes to meet Morganstern's and nodded signifi-cantly. He looked surprised,

then after a moment's consider-ation he nodded back slowly, as if entranced. "See to it," she said.

"Stand to quarters!" Gershom Taylor barked, leaning forward in the pilot's seat of the scout-trader Sibyl

and taking firmer hold of the controls in his long hands. "That ship's coming about again. Dammit, who

are they?"

Dr. Shona Taylor, his wife and partner, sprang up from the crash chair next to his to make room at the

console for Eblich, the co-pilot, then ran aft along the narrow corridor of the Sibyl toward her laboratory.

A sudden lurching turn made the metal panels screech against one another, and threw her into the

bulkhead. Handing her way along carefully, she dragged herself toward the lab module.

The growing feeling of uneasiness she had been nursing since the shipyard two days before had

blossomed into cer-tainty. After months of careful maneuvering, redirecting their subspace calls and

messages through two or perhaps three dummy numbers, paying their bills through an anonymous credit

line for supplies, they had made a single mistake which pinpointed them in space for anybody trying to

find Shona Taylor. Evidently, somebody was still looking.

It had been a mistake to stay so long in the shipyard at the edge of the Venturi system, but the necessary

refit of the Sibyl had taken that much time.

The Taylor Traveling Medicine Show and Trading Company had originally consisted of four people.

Gershom, as captain, also acted as the outside man, negotiating trades. Ivo, the shuttle pilot, was

Gershom's second in making deals and getting the cargo from warehouse to ship and out again. Eblich,

the co-pilot, also acted as bookkeeper, calculating the value against gross profit of the stores maintained

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Jody Lynn Nye - Medicine Show

on board by Kai. They were a tightly knit functional team. All at once, three years past, two more

humans had been added, with a third one present but not yet accounted for, plus all of Shona's animal

team and the impedimenta of a working physician who was also an environmental illness specialist.

Shona always felt apologetic for the hardships caused by her signing on permanently aboard the Sibyl.

The crew, whom she loved like family, had pushed away her apologies, but she knew that having her

there all the time had changed their gestalt, taking up room they were accustomed to using. Not that they

ever acted like it, but she was an intruder. She brought with her a big lab, which could not be reduced in

size, a child, and then an infant, and a vaccine dog, a chemical-sniffing cat, two rabbit food-tasters,

several mice, and an ottle. Though the additions were anticipated and welcomed by the extant crew, the

inevi-table growing pains could not be ignored. Gershom couldn't yet afford to move up to a larger ship.

Renting a ship for such a high-risk occupation as trading was out of the question. Expansion had been

the answer. A new addition would give Shona space of her own and enable the men to realign their own

living quarters and personal space with her as an integral part of the whole. The Venturi yard had been

approached in the greatest of secrecy to undertake the refitting.

Fqr a small additional fee, Venturi was persuaded to stretch the rules just a little bit to enlarge the ship

without registering her engine numbers in the galactic database, as required, until the job was done and

the Sibyl was safely on her way to another system.

With the help of Shona's uncle Harry Elliott, a loan officer at a major bank on Mars, the Taylors

negotiated a renovation loan which was simply added without fanfare to the balance of their mortgage,

paid by monthly debit from their credit account.

The Sibyl, always over-engined for her configuration, had had her nose sliced off and the body behind it

divided in two to add a third cargo hold between the others for Shona's labora-tory module. The space

forward of the hold gave the Taylors the additional room they needed for living quarters and more

storage, reached by a hatch between the starboard hold and Shona's complex. An atmosphered corridor

fitted with airlocks divided the port hold from the lab. With the new generator installed at the head of the

addition, both storage bays could circulate full life-support systems when what they were carry-ing

required it. Before, the holds had been a cold, uncomfort-able place to sleep, as Shona herself could

testify.

Shona saw to it that Gershom was kept busy during the major work on his ship, to keep him from

whimpering over its well-being. He loved the Sibyl like a friend, a close cousin, another woman. Shona,

indulgent rather than jealous, had to find ways to distract him from hanging around the shipyard. Even

her natural cheerfulness had been strained by the time the work was finished. Venturi was a main stop

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