The Apocalypse Troll

"You and me both, lady," he said uneasily. "But how in hell are we supposed to know?"

"I've been thinking about that," she answered slowly. "There's a standard test, back home. I know you don't have the technology we do, but your people can do brain scans, can't they?"

"That depends on what you mean by 'brain scan,' " he said carefully.

"Damn," she muttered. "This language problem is terrible. I'm never certain I'm saying what I think I am!"

"Don't worry," he told her dryly. "We'll be in the same boat-if you'll pardon the pun-when we hit England."

"What?"

"Never mind. Just tell me what this brain scan is supposed to scan."

"Brain waves," she said. "Oh, back home it's all one procedure that also analyzes cellular structure and all the rest, but it's the brain waves that matter."

"That sounds like an EEG," he said. She raised her eyebrows. "An electroencephalogram," he explained. "It measures electrical charges in the brain."

"Good!" Her face brightened and she nodded vigorously. "There's a distinctive spike in the alpha waves for people who can't hear the Trolls-and the reverse, we think."

"Do you mean to tell me," he demanded, "that we have to run an EEG on anyone we consider telling about you?"

"Of course." She seemed surprised. "What's the problem?"

" 'What's the problem?' How the hell are we supposed to convince someone to have an EEG run without even telling him why?"

"Wait a tick." She cocked her head. "Back home it takes about two minutes and it's part of any medicheck. I gather that's not the case here?"

"No," he said with commendable restraint, "it's not." He went on to explain the procedure, and it was her turn to look astonished.

"Good Lord! I've never heard of anything so primitive!"

"We're a pretty primitive bunch, Milla," he said plaintively, "but you're not going to make a lot of friends if you keep reminding us of it."

"Oops." She put a hand on his forearm and squeezed gently. "I'm afraid I've got a bigger mouth than I thought."

"Don't worry," he reassured her, patting her hand in what he fondly thought was an avuncular fashion. "We are primitive by your standards, I guess, but if you're right about how important it is to blend in, you're going to have to work on attitudes as much as speech patterns."

"I know." She smiled at him, and the warmth of her expression reached deep inside him. "Anyway, if we can figure out how to arrange it, all we have to do is run one of these-EEGs?-" she used the unfamiliar term hesitantly, and he nodded "-on me and use it as a comparison base." She frowned. "I think it should be fairly simple. I know what my scan pattern looks like, and I know which spike to watch for. I only hope this EEG is similar enough to let me orient myself."

"I guess we'll just have to cross that bridge when we come to it," he said slowly. He became aware that her hand was still on his forearm and tried to disengage himself unobtrusively. But she tightened her grip, and he stopped and looked up to meet her eyes.

It was a mistake. Those eyes were not, he thought after a moment, what he would have expected from such a young woman. Their incredibly clear, darkly blue depths understood. There was a soft almost-twinkle in them, a sort of gentle teasing he almost grasped laid over a bittersweetness he couldn't begin to fathom. They held neither the embarrassment nor the unintentional cruelty of surprise he might have expected from one so young. And, perhaps most surprising of all, they showed no rejection, not even the gentle nonresponse of someone trying to avoid hurting him for his ridiculous interest.

He was caught. He couldn't recall ever seeing anything quite like her understanding expression, and it was hard to remember hers was the face of a woman who'd killed-killed repeatedly-in the performance of her duty. He had killed, sometimes at a range so close he had smelled his victim's sweat before he struck, and he knew it had marked him inside. He hoped it hadn't made him callous or cold, but he knew it hadn't left him untouched, and he'd often suspected it must show. Even if it didn't, he'd never thought of himself as a ladies' man-certainly no one had ever accused him of being handsome, and age and more than his fair share of scars hadn't improved things. But those young-old eyes seemed to look past externals, totally free of rejection or condemnation.

"Milla," he said finally, "I think-" he gripped her wrist gently and removed her hand from his forearm "-that I should be ashamed of myself."

"Why? I've seen how hard you're working at being a gentleman, but you shouldn't strain yourself. I'm flattered that you enjoy looking at me-why does it bother you?" She asked the question simply, and his face reddened.

"Because of what I'm thinking when I do it." He straightened his shoulders. "You're a stranger here. You've lost everything you ever knew-your friends, your world... . And I'm fifty-nine years old, Milla. You don't need an oversexed geriatric lech trying to-"

He broke off in astonishment at her totally unexpected reaction. It was laughter. Not cutting, dismissive laughter, but soft, genuine amusement ... touched, he realized, with more than just an edge of world-weary sorrow that sat strangely on her fresh, young face.

"I'm sorry, Dick," she said, and her lovely voice was soft. She touched his cheek before he could draw back, and those surprisingly strong fingers were gentle. "I'm not laughing at you-it's just that I keep forgetting how little you know about me." His expression showed his confusion, and her smile faded just a bit. "How old do you think I am, Dick?"

"What?" He looked at her for a moment, then frowned. "I don't know," he said slowly. "When I first saw you, I'd've said eighteen or nineteen. But with all you've seen and done, you have to be older than that, don't you?" He shook his head. She couldn't be much older than that. "Twenty-five?" he hazarded uncertainly, and she laughed again, almost sadly.

"Chronologically," she said, and something in her tone told him she was approaching the point with care, "and bearing in mind the time dilation effect of all the time I've spent at relativistic velocities, I am-or was when this started-a bit over a hundred and thirty." He swallowed, his eyes wide, and she gave him a wry smile. "Biologically, of course, I'm younger than that. Only eighty-three."

He stared at her. Eighty-three? Impossible! She was a child! He started to speak, then stopped, remembering the way she'd healed.

"Eighty-three?" he asked finally, amazed by how calm he sounded, and she nodded. "Just what is the average life span where you come from, Milla?"

"About a hundred and twenty," she said steadily, and he shook his head.

"You folks do all your aging in a hurry at the end or something?" he asked slowly.

"No. We age at the same proportional rate we always did. Or most of us do." She smiled, but for the first time, it did not touch her eyes. "You see, there was a reason I reacted so strongly when you suggested I might not be human, Dick. My grandfather survived the bio attack on Midgard, and I've heard a lot of that kind of thing because in a sense I'm not ... not really."

"What-" He paused and licked his lips, even more shaken by the carefully hidden pain in her expression than by what she had just said. He reached out and touched her wrist. "What exactly does that mean?" he asked, forcing his voice to sound level.

"It's a bit complicated," she said, and her eyes thanked him for controlling his surprise. "You see, the Kangas were short on time, so instead of whipping up a new bug from scratch, they modified a nasty little parasite from Delta Pavonis. It wasn't so much a biological weapon as an organic one-and a nasty one, at that. Essentially, it was transmitted as an airborne bacteria and matured into a multicellular parasite rather like a Terran slime mold that invaded the respiratory and alimentary systems and used the circulatory system to get around its host's body. The parasite itself didn't look like much-just a double handful of protoplasmic ooze that scavenged its hosts for its own needs until they died of starvation or respiratory failure. If that didn't kill them, something very like cancer set in ... and if anyone actually managed to survive that, the parasite simply went on growing until it clogged the arteries.