Radiant by James Alan Gardner Page A

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.
    What caught up with me was my life. The whole of it. The isolation of a childhood as Ugly Screaming Stink-Girl. The unfairness of being forced into the Explorer Corps. The loneliness of months on a starship with nothing but a lunatic partner, a collection of amateurish figurines, and a crew of thirty-five people who couldn't look me in the face but constantly stole sidelong glances.
    I should have been somebody else. Not an Explorer, not a virgin, not an alien parasite's host. I was only nineteen. I should have had a future; I should have had a past; but I had neither.
    So I sank to the ground and wept. In anger, sorrow, fear, regret, grief, self-pity, and loneliness.
    After a while, I felt Festina Ramos gently stroking my hair. Some time later, she was holding me as I sobbed against her shirt. But when I'd cried myself out, she eased away. She put a handkerchief in my hand; then she stood up and turned her back while I wiped my eyes, blew my nose, mopped my cheek.
    I was left holding the handkerchief, wondering if I should give it back to her. It was damp and filthy... but at least my cheek hadn't bled the way it often did when I fell to pieces.
    "I'm sorry, Admiral," I mumbled.
    "Call me Festina," she said. "I'm sick of formality... especially with fellow Explorers."
    I didn't answer. I could easily get past the military convention of addressing people by rank... but I squirmed at the Western rudeness of using no titles at all. Why couldn't I call her Daw Festina? Or if our shared background as Explorers made us "sisters in arms," I could bring myself to call her Ma Festina. But just a plain unadorned Festina? It was like spitting in her face. Still, there was no point explaining proper etiquette to Caucasians. Even if they decided to respect my good manners, they always put an ironic tone in their voices as if they were humoring a simpleton.
    I would just have to get used to calling her by name alone. Festina. At least it was pronounceable, unlike many Western names.
    "So that's over," Admiral Ramos—Festina—said in a light voice. "Now we set emotion aside and get busy."
    "Busy doing what?"
    "Immediate practical things. When life goes to shit, do immediate practical things. Like head for a starbase hospital."
    "They won't be able to help me."
    She gazed down at me with her piercing green eyes. "You're right. But it doesn't matter, because I doubt we'll reach the hospital. You know why?"
    I nodded. "Something will come up. The Balrog intends to use you somehow, and I'll have to come for the ride. I'm the carrying case for the spores."
    Ramos... Festina... winced. "Yes. Sorry about that."
    I shrugged. "If I really am just a carrying case, maybe when this is all over, the Balrog will let me go."
    She gave me a look. "Do you really believe that?"
    "No. But they still haven't