Then Ramos disappeared. No word where she was going — just a brief interview with a third-string reporter who happened to be hanging around New Earth’s main spaceport. Ramos said duty called her elsewhere, and she might not be back for some time. "Best wishes to the new High Council, may they serve with honor, I trust they’ll receive everyone’s full support, gotta go now, bye." Or words to that effect.
With that, Festina Ramos swept off the public stage like a tired ballerina who wants to get away before someone calls, "Encore!"
Navy gossip occasionally reported Ramos sightings around the galaxy — a day on Troyen with Queen Innocence… four days on Celestia with Lord Protector York and his Mandasar wife… three weeks in seclusion on Demoth with some junior proctor of the Vigil… rumors of surprise visits to archaeological digs, disease research centers, and the YouthBoost vats on Sitz — but Ramos avoided the media, never gave public statements, and kept on the move. By the time word leaked out where she’d been, she was already someplace else.
Her behavior provoked countless theories. For example, some suggested that during her investigations into the High Council, she’d discovered something she hadn’t made public: a threat much worse than the crimes she’d revealed, and now she was racing from planet to planet, trying to end the danger before disaster struck. A number of my fellow Explorers, however, were sure she was the victim of "pretty people politics" — the top echelons of the Technocracy couldn’t stomach a disfigured purple-cheeked woman taking command of the fleet, so they sent her on meaningless errands to remove her from the spotlight. Personally, I wondered if she’d just got fed up with the politicians, the media, and all the other talk-talk-talk. If she’d really been offered the highest post in the navy, she might have turned it down as more trouble than it was worth. Then she’d happily fled the public eye and was now on extended vacation, going wherever she liked… perhaps helping out here and there, but certainly not battling galactic-scale dangers.
Still, I’d known better than to mention my suspicions to other Academy cadets. They’d worshiped Ramos as a hero. She’d been an Explorer herself before the Admiralty abruptly bumped her (at age twenty-six) to lieutenant admiral and made her the navy’s problem-solver-without-portfolio. Nobody knew how she’d won such a promotion, though everyone suspected she’d caught the High Council in some mischief and blackmailed them into making concessions. Certainly, Ramos’s first official act was to conduct a "policy review" of the Explorer Corps, leading to an overhaul of corps operations and substantial improvements in the treatment of Explorers by other branches of the service. That alone would have made her popular among us "expendable crew members"… but more important, she carried out her highly visible activities while still looking like an Explorer. As an admiral, Ramos could easily have obtained treatment to remove her florid birthmark; but she’d stayed the way she was, no matter how much it disconcerted "normal" people.
Was it any wonder Explorers loved her?
I’d admired her as much as anyone else had. But now, as she checked that my wound was closed, I felt a dawning resentment.
Ramos’s history proved she was surrounded by extraordinary karma — which is not some mystical force but the everyday processes whereby seeds sown in the past bear fruit in the present. Karma simply means that the choices you made yesterday affect the options you have today. It’s common sense. Nothing is inevitable or predetermined… yet your actions and the actions of others can sometimes produce a cumulative momentum almost impossible to resist. That’s what karma is: the momentum of cause and effect that drives you forward, occasionally into bottlenecks or booby traps.
Some people have more momentum than others. Some are riding an avalanche. Festina Ramos was clearly one of those avalanche riders; her karma would sweep her from crisis to crisis until her luck or momentum ran out.
And people like me would be caught in the avalanche too.
Here’s what I was thinking as I lay paralyzed, watching Ramos repack the first-aid kit. Why would the Balrog care about an Ugly Screaming Stink-Girl? It wouldn’t. It would care about a high-ranking avalanche rider like Festina Ramos; she could be useful in the Balrog’s plans, whatever they were. And if those plans required a pawn to serve as host for fuzzy red spores, the Balrog would find great amusement in choosing a host who looked like the admiral’s dark twin.
In other words, I’d been picked because my appearance would get a rise out of Festina Ramos.
She and I were almost the same height. We were both strong, lean, and athletic. Her hair was cut much like mine: short and uncomplicated. Our faces weren’t similar if you compared individual features — her green eyes, my brown, her finely cut nose, mine wider and flatter — but anyone looking at Ramos and me would ignore such minor differences. Observers would be transfixed by our disfigured cheeks. Nothing else would matter.
Even Ramos couldn’t help staring. She checked that Tut was sleeping peacefully and shooed away some curious Cashlings by brandishing her pistol; then she came back and knelt by my side. For almost a minute, she did nothing but gaze at my face. If I’d been able to move, I would have told her to stop. It reminded me too much of my mother, who’d gaze at my cheek in sickened fascination when she thought I wouldn’t notice. But at least there was no disgust in Ramos’s expression — I was used to stares of disgust, and the admiral’s eyes were blessedly free of such condemnation. Free of pity too. Whatever Ramos was thinking, she hid it well.
In time, she turned away from my face. That’s when she saw the blood pricks on my feet. "Oh fuck," she said — not angrily, just a whisper. "Are those Balrog bites? Is that why your partner went after you with the knife?"
"Yes."
When the word came out of my mouth, I was just as surprised as Ramos. For a terrifying moment, I thought I was still paralyzed, and the Balrog was speaking through me as if I were a ventriloquist’s dummy. But somehow I’d regained control of my muscles, with none of the staggering nausea that usually follows a stunner blast. I sat up… spent a moment straightening my chemise, until I was flooded with embarrassment by my ridiculous attempt at modesty… then scrambled to my knees in front of the kneeling Ramos and saluted. "Explorer Third Class Ma Youn Suu, Admiral."
We were almost nose to nose… like little girls kneeling together, getting ready to play some game. Ramos swallowed hard and edged away. She didn’t return my salute. "You, uhh, you did get bitten, didn’t you? That’s why you got shot by… uhh…"
"He calls himself Tut."
"Appropriate name. Anyway, if you can shrug off a stun-charge that quickly, you’re…"
"Infested. Yes, Admiral."
She looked at me. The uneasiness on her face slowly softened. "How do you feel?"
"I don’t feel different, if that’s what you’re asking."
"That’s not what I’m asking. How do you feel?"
I looked at her. She was an admiral, yes, but only a few years older than I. Not like a prying mother — just a concerned big sister. Or a friend. "I feel… I don’t know…"
That was the moment it caught up with me. Everything. Not just being in my underwear at the top of a pyramid in the center of an alien city, with two bite marks on my feet and extraterrestrial parasites in my blood. Not just the prospect of becoming like Kaisho Namida, a cripple in a wheelchair, solid moss from the waist down, and a brain so overrun with spores that she spoke of the Balrog like a lover. Not just the realization that I would be changed against my will and could never again trust my own body, thoughts, emotions, perceptions, or desires.