Read Online IGMS Issue 44 by IGMS - Free Book Online Page A

them all the time, but they are there."
    A lingering effect. At once Jake was flooded by fear for Malia, and fear of being locked away with her indefinitely again.
    "What does that mean?" Jake said. "What lingers?"
    "Nothing physical," Dr. Venus said. "I've seen Cai's scans, and there are no embryos anywhere in his body."
    "Did I say I had Bruma in me?" Cai asked.
    Jake felt Cai's glare as if the young man had to explain the most basic thing in the world.
    "I have two sons," Cai continued. "One young and fast, always running in circles, always playing. One larger and calmer, contemplating life. He's a philosopher. I have contact with them both, but they don't live in me any longer. My first son shares his moods with me quite often. He is very, very far away, but the Bruma don't measure distances the same way we do. From what the Doctor tells me, Malia's first daughter is the same variety as my second son, so that one probably hasn't spoken to her yet. But her last four children will be playing by now, like my firstborn."
    "Wait, your Bruma sons?" Andrea asked. "Who talk to you? What . . . they're telepaths? Did they leave something in your head? "
    Cai threw up his hands. "I told you they wouldn't understand!" A litany of what Jake supposed was Mandarin curses followed.
    "Cai is in contact with the Bruma he gave birth to," Doctor Venus said. "Malia is the mother of five Bruma babies. I think it's a fair assumption that Malia recently had her first telepathic contact with her children. The oldest hasn't matured enough for conversation yet, but the wee ones are probably communicating now. Their thoughts and feelings are likely what she describes as 'tickling.'"
    Jake lowered his voice so Malia wouldn't hear him. "Likely? Probably? If there's still Bruma stuff left in her head, I want it out! We don't know what it'll do to her. What if she hemorrhages when we go downside? What if they take over her mind to control her?"
    "They're her children," Cai said. "They won't do that."
    Something in Jake wanted to grab Cai and scream
She's my daughter
. But Andrea spoke before he did.
    "Is the Major keeping you on a short leash, Cai?" Her voice was full of kindness, and Jake knew that her empathy was helping them a hundred times more than his aggravation.
    Cai's voice filled with hard emotions. "Men like him are always following me. Asking to do tests, offering to take samples, checking that I'm alright. They should just let it be, accept it. But they won't. They ask me about every thought my children share with me. Sometimes they put machines on my head and watch what is triggering in my brain. They don't care if I don't want to tell them. They just keep asking. And I'm not going downside, ever."
    A chill went through Jake. Dictatorships on Earth had a way of monitoring people, but this was worse, an intrusion that neatly fit the label "Thought Police." He'd be damned if he'd let Major Blutnikov turn Malia into an object of study.
    Doctor Venus said, "If the Major finds out that Malia has these abilities he'll never let her go."
    "Men like the Major live for this kind of thing," Cai said. "Don't give in to their fears. Just accept that the Bruma are with Malia. They're a gift, not an illness."
    A gift? That was pushing the crap cart too far.
    But Andrea took his hand, and while they looked at each other, his thoughts tumbled into place.
    Malia would always have the scars across her stomach. But if Cai was right, she would have something else as well. A link to another species. A connection that could stretch across the galaxy. A whole new kind of motherhood. He didn't need to ask Andrea to know she was thinking along the same lines.
    "Why are you helping us?" Jake asked the Doctor.
    "People in power have used diagnoses to have their way throughout history," he replied. "Illnesses like leprosy, HIV, and schizophrenia have caused people to be mistreated and isolated. Transsexuals and people with Down's Syndrome have been branded as sick