Free Brother Termite by Patricia Anthony Page B

replacement for him immediately.”
    “Oh.” There was a long pause. “All right. Nothing scandalous, I hope.”
    Reen thought hard, wondering what the Germans would consider scandalous. Invading China? “He just wasn’t ... pulling his weight.”
    “Ja, ja. All right. Yes. These things happen.”
    The intercom buzzed. Natalie said, “Call on line two.”
    Reen ignored her. “When can you send a replacement?”
    “Well ...” Hassenbein said judiciously, as though he were counting the days on his fingers.
    Natalie: “Emergency call, sir.”
    The governor said smugly, “We have, you know, a pool of good applicants to choose from.”
    “Yes, I’m sure. Let’s set up a time. I can send one of my ships to get you. There is a great deal I wish to talk to you about. The tanks you have sent to Russia, for example–”
    “What?” Hassenbein blurted. “What tanks?”
    A burst of static from the intercom. “Quen on line two, sir. He says there’s a medical emergency in West Virginia, and you’re to pick up the line immediately.”
    “What ta–”
    Reen punched the red square at the edge of his phone, neatly clipping the end of Hassenbein’s question. Hand shaking, he pushed the pulsing light on two. “Quen?”
    The Cousin Caretaker’s voice was frantic. “Angela is sick, Reen-ja. Very sick. You must come to West Virginia at once.”
    “She–”
    “Now, Reen!” Even over the phone lines, Reen could hear the hysteria in his Cousin’s voice. “Come quickly.”
    Reen was out the door and halfway across the anteroom when Natalie called, “Governor Hassenbein’s still on hold. What should I tell him?”
    Cold terror rose in Reen’s chest like water from a broken pipe. Distantly he wondered if the little death was coming for him as it had come for Tali.
    “Sir?”
    He turned blindly to Natalie, for a moment wondering where he was and what he had been about to do.
    “Sir?” she asked in a hushed voice.
    He remembered. Angela. Angela needed him. “Tell him anything,” Reen gasped as he ran to the ship.

QUEN MET met him at the door of the children’s house. “Oh, Reen-ja,” he said, wringing his hands. “She is very sick.”
    Reen brushed him aside, ran past a clump of wide-eyed children entranced by a puppet show, and burst through the doorway to the female dormitory. Angela’s bed was empty.
    Some part of him had always known it would happen. The combination wouldn’t work; the mixture of genes would be unstable. A few years of life, and some unseen mistake, some fatal error in planning, would kill her.
    “Reen-ja,” Quen said, his voice thick with pity.
    Shut up! Reen’s mind screamed. If Quen didn’t speak, Angela would still be there. She would come running to him the way she always did. Reen stood frozen, one hand on the door, his disbelieving eyes on the barren bed, the vacant pillow, the way the late afternoon sun cast a river of brass across the empty floor.
    Quen touched Reen’s sleeve with a claw. “Reen-ja,” he whispered sadly. “She ...”
    Reen’s mouth widened until he felt it had opened a tunnel through his chest. He should have known never to fall in love with anything so fragile. “Shut up!”
    In the living room the high silly voice of the puppet hushed. The children, startled by the shout, began to cry.
    Warm human fingers grasped his shoulders. “Sir,” Mrs. Gonzales said quietly. “She’s in a room by herself. We’re keeping her away from the other children.”
    Reen found himself being pulled around. He tripped over his numb feet. Behind Mrs. Gonzales’s doughy bulk stood an assembly of curious, large-headed children and Quen, his black eyes wide.
    “Are you all right?” Mrs. Gonzales asked, steadying Reen with a strong hand, a hand made for cooking gingerbread and wiping children’s greedy faces.
    Reen didn’t have the strength to answer.
    “It’s just the flu, sir,” she told him in her soothing voice. “Here. Let me take you to her. She’s been