The Good That Men Do - Andy Mangels [94]
“Do you know what I’d be very pleased to see right now?” Doctor Ehrehin said in a querulous tone. “The inside of one of my laboratories, for a start.”
Trip noticed that the old man seemed to be studying his face carefully. Looks like it’s finally showtime, he thought. Better knock him dead with the first performance, or else we’re both liable to end up that way.
Aloud, he said, “Don’t worry, Doctor. Soon you’ll have all the lab resources you could ever want.”
Ehrehin responded with an almost cackling laugh. “You mean after I defect to one of those so-called Coalition planets? Is that what they’ve told you?”
Trip felt confused, and noted that his discomfiture was slowly escalating. This man wasn’t speaking like a defector. In fact, he sounded more like a prisoner. Of course, Ch’uihv had warned them that Ehrehin might not be entirely rational. But still…
He took a few more steps toward the aged scientist, as did Phuong. Trip saw that Ehrehin had continued squinting up at him all the while.
A look of recognition, mixed with equal parts hope and fear, crossed Ehrehin’s face as Trip came to a stop less than a meter away.
“Cunaehr?” Ehrehin said in a quavering voice. “Is that you?”
Trip swallowed hard and nodded. “Yes, sir. It’s me.”
The old man looked toward the ceiling. “Computer, turn up the lights by twenty percent.” Fixing his gaze back upon Trip as the light level increased, he said, “Come closer. Let me get a better look at you.”
Trip knelt beside the old man’s chair and let the scientist examine his face more closely. With a tremulous hand, Ehrehin gently brushed his rough, gnarled finger-tips across Trip’s cheek. Here’s hoping the Adigeons gave us our money’s worth, he thought, his heart in his throat.
“It is you,” the old man said at length, leaning back in his chair so as to get a better look at his visitor. “But how is that possible, Cunaehr? I saw you die.”
Trip put on the most disarming smile he could muster. “Are you sure about that, Doctor? I’d like to think of my presence here as empirical evidence to the contrary.” Sure hope I sounded enough like a scientist to fool a scientist, Trip thought.
Ehrehin squinted up at Trip for another protracted moment, then shrugged. “I suppose I can’t argue with empirical evidence.” He pushed against the arms of his chair, rising to his feet with what Trip judged to be a good deal of pain. “Now help me get out of here.”
Trip rose and allowed the frail scientist to lean on his arm. “Ch’uihv says that a transport will be coming for you in just a few eisae.”
“A few eisae,” Ehrehin repeated, almost mockingly. “I suppose that bastard Ch’uihv thinks that’ll give him all the time he needs to finish getting what he wants out of me.”
“I don’t understand,” Trip said, though he feared that he did indeed understand what was really happening here all too well.
Ehrehin stared at Trip as though he were a willfully obtuse schoolchild. “You really don’t think he intends to just hand over my knowledge of avaihh lli vastam to others without first taking it for himself, do you?”
It took the electronics mounted in Trip’s inner ear an additional moment to process the unfamiliar term Ehrehin had used: avaihh lli vastam, which translated from the Old High Rihannsu still sometimes used by academics as “warp-seven capable stardrive” in the current vernacular.
“You have to help me get away from these people, Cunaehr,” the old man continued. “Before they finally do succeed in breaking me. It’s really only a matter of time, and Admiral Valdore’s forces might not find me before it’s too late.”
Trip exchanged a brief glance with Phuong, whose expression revealed as much perplexity as Trip himself felt. Focusing his gaze back upon Ehrehin, Trip said, “I don’t understand, Doctor. I thought you’d gone willingly with the Ejhoi Ormiin.”
Ehrehin’s eyes were now wide and