The Green Leopard Plague and Other Stories by Walter Jon Williams Read Free Book Online Page A

his eyes. He had lost her again. Over the bubble of hopelessness in his throat he asked, "How long has it been since my data arrived?"
    "A little over eight days."
    They had waited eight days, then, for Beagle —for the Beagle of seven years ago—to correct its problem and reestablish communication. If Beagle had resumed contact, the mass of data that was Davout might have been erased as redundant.
    "The government has announced the loss," Li said. "Though there is a remote chance that the Beagle may come flying in or through the system in eleven years as scheduled, we have detected no more transmissions, and we've been unable to observe any blueshifted deceleration torch aimed at our system. The government decided that it would be unfair to keep sibs and survivors in the dark any longer."
     Davout signed.
    He envisioned the last moments of the Beagle , the crew being flung back and forth as the ship slammed through increasing pendulum swings, the desperate attempts, fighting wildly fluctuating gravity and inertia, to reach the emergency nanobeds . . . no panic, Davout thought, Captain Moshweshwe had trained his people too well for that. Just desperation, and determination, and, as the oscillations grew worse, an increasing sense of futility, and impending death.
    No one expected to die anymore. It was always a shock when it happened near you. Or to you.
    "The cause of the Beagle 's problem remains unknown," Li said, the voice far away. "The Bureau is working with simulators to try to discover what happened."
    Davout leaned back against his pillow. Pain throbbed in his veins, pain and loss, knowledge that his past, his joy, was irrecoverable. "The whole voyage," he said, "was a catastrophe."
     Li signed. "You terraformed and explored two worlds," he said. "Downloads are already living on these worlds, hundreds of thousands now, millions later. There would have been a third world added to our commonwealth if your mission had not been cut short due to the, ah, first accident . . . "
     Davout signed, but only because his words would have come out with too much bitterness.
    , a curt jerk of Li's fingers. "There are messages from your sibs," Li said, "and downloads from them also. The sibs and friends of Beagle 's crew will try to contact you, no doubt. You need not answer any of these messages until you're ready."
    
    Davout hesitated, but the words were insistent; he gave them tongue. "Have Katrin's sibs sent messages?" he asked.
    Li's grave expression scarcely changed. "I believe so." He tilted his head. "Is there anything I can do for you? Anything I can arrange?"
    "Not now, no," said Davout. he signed. "Can I move from the bed now?"
    Li's look turned abstract as he scanned indicators projected somewhere in his mind. "You may," he said. He rose from his chair, took the pipe from his mouth. "You are in a hospital, I should add," he said, "but you do not have the formal status of patient, and may leave at any time. Likewise, you may stay here for the foreseeable future, as long as you feel it necessary."
     "Where is this hospital, by the way?"
    "West Java. The city of Bandung."
    Earth, then. Which Davout had not seen in seventy-seven years. Memory's gentle fingers touched his mind with the scent of durian, of ocean, of mace, cloves, and turmeric.
    He knew he was never in Java before, though, and wondered whence the memory came. From one of his sibs, perhaps?
     Davout signed again, putting a touch of finality, a kind of dismissal, into the twist of his fingers.
    Dr. Li left Davout alone, in his new/old body, in the room that whispered of memory and pain.
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    In a dark wood armoire Davout found identification and clothing, and a record confirming that his account had received seventy-eight years' back pay. His electronic inbox contained downloads from his sibs and more personal messages than he could