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Here you'll find
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Mount Robillard
10. An InterviewRori glanced at the clock yet again, one long-fingered hand idly playing with a pen he'd snatched from the stand on the desk, and smothered a sigh. He had no right to be so impatient. After all they hadn't agreed on any particular time, just to see a little later, but he couldn't help it.Ever since he'd walked innocently into the canteen, nearly bumped into Osip's broad back, and gaped with the Commanders at the stunning sight of one dark-haired clone sitting at the same table with Lancer and his eye-catching bunch of friends, he'd been practically boiling with curiosity. After their departure he had barely been able to wait a few minutes before getting Lancer on the comm and securing an interview, preferably with both of them. And Lancer's ready agreement to the appointment had done nothing to placate the young mentalist's frame of mind. Rather on the contrary. For the past couple of hours he'd been fighting a losing battle with anticipation, so that he literally jumped when he heard a promising bleep from his pocket. He fished the comm out, nearly dropped it in his eagerness, and hurriedly pressed a button. "Yes?" "Are you free now?" Ahh, Lancer at last! "We'll be there in a moment, if it suits you." "Sure, I've got nothing but time," Rori assured. "Anytime you want." A few minutes later the much-awaited couple at last showed up at his door, Lancer's hand firmly clasped in Scott's. Lancer was oozing reassurance and encouragement which Scott seemed to sorely need: instead of the slight nervousness he'd displayed some time earlier in the canteen, he now looked downright frightened. "It's all right, Scott," Lancer said softly. "I'm right here with you all the time. And I told you, our doctors only want to help us." He glanced quickly at Rori, eyes narrowing for a tiny moment. "Quite especially they would never terminate anybody." Rori couldn't completely bite back a horrified gasp, and Scott looked at him quickly. In the available split second Rori tried to decide what kind of behavior would least resemble Scott's earlier experiences of the medical profession, and decided on a friendly smile. Somehow he couldn't imagine that a doctor dealing with clones who were identified by numbers and apparently killed as soon as they proved useless, would see much point in wasting smiles on his patients. The approach seemed to have the desired effect: Scott's wary face relaxed, albeit minutely, and the corners of his mouth twitched a little. "Lancer's absolutely right," Rori assured, trying to sound as friendly and concerned as he possibly could. "I just want to check your physical condition, and maybe talk a little. But that's all." Scott let himself be walked into the room and sat on the edge of a chair. Lancer pulled another chair next to his, never letting go of the tense hand, and Rori forced his own enthusiasm under control. Appearing too keen, he concluded, would do nothing but harm in the present situation. With a lot of patient coaxing Lancer managed to persuade Scott to undergo a thorough physical examination, and several times Rori found himself marveling at the trust the young man inspired in the highly suspicious clone. Scott was absolutely horrified, like he'd probably always been whenever faced with a medic, Rori mused, but this was likely to be the first time when he dared show it. Obviously the doctor's office in the base had been a place of sinister mystery, nobody ever bothering to tell the clones much about what happened there, and despite the way the clones had been treated, they'd still grown up human enough to be instinctively terrified of the unknown. Even worse, apparently they knew that every now and then one of them would go there and never come back. Had they been given any explanations? Had they been actually told that another one of their ranks had been 'terminated', or was it something they'd only heard whispers about? Did the hapless one perhaps know beforehand what was to happen? Why were they terminated because of behavior, or injuries, or what? Rori shivered internally. And yet Lancer was able to talk Scott into being weighed and measured, blood-tested and full-body scanned. All the time he stayed next to the clone, holding his hand and telling him in a quiet, confident voice what was happening at each moment. To top it all, he even got Scott to sit down with him in the doctor's office and discuss the results. If that didn't constitute a true achievement, Rori wasn't sure what would. He watched as Lancer took Scott to sit on the examination table in the corner of the room and calmly climbed on it, too, wedging himself between Scott's legs, back against his chest. This position seemed to make Scott feel a lot more confident. He wrapped wiry arms around Lancer's upper body and peered at Rori from behind his human shield who just smiled happily. "You were quite right, Lancer," Rori said lifting incredulous eyes from the monitor incorporated into the desk. "Scott really has grown height. To be exact, he's now 3.6 centimeters taller than when you first brought him in here. Not to mention gaining weight, of course. But even though he's had next to no exercise, the weight gain had increased his muscle mass far more than his body fat." "Meaning?" Lancer frowned a little. "Meaning that it looks like Scott's nutritional status has retarded both his muscular and skeletal development," Rori explained. "In other words, from what Scott has earlier told you and what I've found out now, we can conclude that basically Scott's been underfed." "So now that he's got as much food as he wants, he's grown?" Lancer leaned back against Scott who hugged him closer and nearly smiled for the first time since they had come in. "Yes. When his body has been getting enough nutrients, his bones have grown length and his muscle tissue has increased. And the scan shows that Scott's probably going to go on growing for a while still. The growth areas of his long bones, here " Rori displayed an image on the wall screen, zoomed in, and pointed near the thicker end of a femur, "these have begun to ossify but they are still relatively soft. That means his growth is nearing its end but hasn't stopped yet." "You're going to be still taller!" Lancer rubbed his head on Scott's shoulder and got a quick peck on the cheek. Rori smiled at the sight. Scott certainly wasn't in the least shy of public displays of affection, and the cuddling apparently had a definite calming effect on him. "How much will he still grow, can you give any estimate?" "Hard to say." Rori shrugged. "This growth spurt has been extraordinarily rapid, so it's really difficult to guess anything. I'd say maybe a couple of centimeters more, but I could be massively wrong. Scott's skeletal picture corresponds to the usual development of a seventeen or eighteen-year-old, so " "I am sixteen," Scott piped up. Rori's breath hitched. Lancer stiffened and slowly twisted around to look at the serious face behind him. "What did you say?" "That I am sixteen," Scott repeated. "Sixteen years and two months." Rori stared and so did Lancer, though from a much closer distance. He slowly shook his head. "It is true!" Scott insisted. "Is there something wrong with that?" "I'd have thought you were around twenty," Rori said weakly. "You look about the same age as Lancer." "But this is how I have looked like for a few years already." Scott cocked his head. "Not quite," Rori reminded him. "You've grown taller, and also broader." He tried to think quickly, stumbled on a number of alternative explanations, each more unnerving than the previous, and firmly pushed the train of thought aside. There'd be enough time to ponder the possible implications later. Lancer still looked shell-shocked and Scott's expression grew alarmed. "Is there something wrong with that?" he asked again. Lancer took a deep breath, then shook his head and smiled. He pressed a tender kiss on Scott's lips. "Absolutely nothing;" he assured softly. "I'm just very surprised, that's all." He turned to look at Rori. "I think we might go now, unless there's still something important you wanted to tell?" "No, according to all results Scott's is perfect condition," Rori said with a smile. "If you want to hear more details, you can drop in any time." This time he got a definite smile from Scott, too. The two slid off of the bed and slipped into the corridor, inevitably hand in hand. Rori closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose to expel the unpleasant feeling that threatened to engulf him. For a while he just sat there, then shook his head and decided to immerse himself in the details of Scott's test results. Maybe they would yield some answers to at least some of the questions that danced around in his mind. He had no idea how long he'd been poring over the data when a quiet rap on the door intruded his thoughts. "I hope we're not disturbing too badly?" Upon hearing Arria's pleasant voice Rori turned to see the Commanders peeking hopefully from the door. "We caught a glimpse of Lancer and Scott a while ago, and they said they'd already been here. So we were hoping you might have something for us?" "Oh, just come in!" Rori gestured towards the austere chairs. "I think I definitely need someone to talk to." "We're very ready to oblige," Osip announced. "Obviously you then have something to tell." "Yes, or rather, I need to talk just to get my own thoughts into some kind of order!" Rori combed his fingers through his somewhat unruly dark hair, failed completely to lessen its chaos, and leaned his elbows on the desk. "What with the recording, and Scott's physical examination, and all that, I'm totally nonplussed." "Well then talk!" Arria crossed his legs comfortably and looked expectant. "OK, to start with the recording..." Rori took a deep breath and exhaled it equally slowly. "I was fairly sure that the stagnant period Scott's had for some time, right until yesterday, lasted so long simply because there was such a lot happening under the surface. But still I'm thoroughly surprised by what took place last night. There's no denying that." "Yeah, looks like there was a hell of a lot happening underneath!" Osip grinned. "So, what do you make out of it? Did the recording give you anything, except a massive surprise?" "After viewing it so many times that I think I know it by heart, yes, I do have a theory," Rori nodded. "I think that Scott had been gradually accepting all the information and basically by now just needed a strong push to finally break out of the cage erected by the Code. And he got it when Lancer was so badly put off by that mistake with the film." "He said himself that it made him feel strange," Arria pointed out. "And that he'd viewed it several times, probably because he'd been so intrigued by those feelings and needed to analyze them, don't you think?" "Precisely. So, seeing his trusted friend Lancer so upset and in need of comforting and, mind you, even telling him exactly what to do Scott found himself in a position where he felt strongly enough to finally brave that first touch." Rori nodded slowly to himself. "And the world did not come to an end. A divine bolt of lightning didn't suddenly strike him. He breached the Code, and what happened? Nothing." Arria nodded in understanding. "So there, too, the first step was the hardest?" he said. "And after that, going much further wasn't really that bad." Rori cleared his throat and shot an amused glance at the blond Commander. "I think you'd be in a better position than me to say anything about how difficult or easy it was... after all, weren't you the ones to censor the rest of the recording?" "Oh no, you won't catch us there!" Osip exclaimed and shook his finger at Rori. "I can assure you we didn't watch it many seconds beyond the point where it now ends. And even those few seconds we saw simply because the first time around we were simply too dumbfounded to react right away!" "OK, I'll take your word for it," Rori laughed, then his expression sobered. "However, ever since the physical examination today I've felt... I don't know, weird. Uncomfortable. Freaked. Look at this." He displayed an array of data on the screen, glanced at the two desperate faces and smiled wryly. "Don't worry, this is just the raw data and I'll start explaining it to you right now! First, the purely external things..." He went through the medical data, picked up an unusual value here, pointed out deviations from initial results there, and managed to do it in sufficiently non-jargon terms to give the Commanders an understanding of the situation. His listeners' expressions turned from intrigued through astonished and incredulous to shocked. "Would you say that once more, as simply as you can?" Osip was fairly sure he had understood it all right, but he was still hoping he might have drawn a wrong conclusion somewhere along the way. Rori sighed. "My interpretation from the data is that Scott's physical development has been strictly regulated, probably using a combination of nutritional and hormonal means," he stated. "Most likely his physical development has first been accelerated and then intentionally stunted after he has reached the desired stage. Quite possibly his bodily functions have also been chemically or hormonally regulated." Arria looked nauseous. "Disgusting," he mumbled. "Let me get this straight." Osip steepled his fingers and leaned his chin on them. "What you mean to say is that it looks like they are first artificially grown into certain specifications, probably based on the purely physical requirements of flying a fighter plane, and then artificially kept that way?" "Yes," Rori nodded. "The hormonal changes in his blood samples from the time of his arrival till now support that theory. Add to that what he told me, about having looked the same for a few years and being sixteen years old, and the fact that he's not only grown but apparently also developed a healthy libido since his arrival here, and it still holds together. Sounds like the Union hasn't yet perfected their cloning procedures, not by a long shot, if their products take such a lot of tweaking to stay what they've been designed to become eh naturally." "You mean that even their sex drive might have been kept at bay by feeding them hormones?" Arria asked, curious. "That's a very old trick!" Rori smirked ruefully. "Known and used for centuries." "Old trick maybe, but still it doesn't sound exactly right," Osip sneered. "Well, by now I can't help wondering whether their aircraft has been designed specifically for their clone pilots or are the poor clones simply made to fit in their planes." "Your guess is as good as mine," Arria muttered. " I feel sick." "So do I," Rori admitted. "All of this means that we'll just have to keep watching how he develops now that he doesn't get all those hormonal suppressants and enhancers and what-not anymore. I just hope this doesn't have any dramatic effects on his life expectancy." Osip blinked a few times. "Oh damn." "We must remember that the Union isn't very likely to have much interest in making the clones very long-lived," Rori explained. "They aren't probably expected to live very old anyway, so their producers wouldn't be overly concerned about possible long-term effects on their health." "Do you have any idea of how his lifespan might be affected?" Arria asked. "None whatsoever," Rori said. "Right now all we can do is watch and hope for the best." At the same time the topic of their conversation very much shared the same feelings, though for a different reason. He had only needed a little respite in the solitude of the little room before wanting to explore the base once more. Like a hyperactive teen indeed, thought an amused Lancer, when Scott practically towed him into the corridor and insisted on going 'somewhere'. Currently they were standing in the largest aircraft hangar, Scott looking at the shimmering outline of his own plane with adoring eyes. Lancer glanced at him and smiled tenderly. Scott's self-confidence seemed to grow exponentially with each passing moment and he barely took notice of the mechanics hovering around. But what was that crease between well-defined eyebrows? "I hope I am not like pilot 01..." Scott sighed quietly. Lancer squeezed his hand and dark blue orbs turned to him. "What's that?" "There was a story about pilot 01, who did not do as he was told, and did not eat his regulated portions." Scott nearly whispered. "And so he grew and grew, until first he did not fit in his plane anymore, and in the end he was as big as his fighter. Will the same happen to me, too?" "Definitely not!" Lancer assured him. "It's not possible for a human to grow so big." "Are you sure?" "Absolutely sure. Not even Commander Osip is so big, or Fonzo, and they are the biggest men I've ever seen." "But what about clones?" "Not even clones, Scott. Besides, I don't think that it's in your genes to grow very tall and broad anyway, so don't you worry." "Worry? What's got you worried, Scott?" Merez emerged from behind another plane and sauntered closer. "Your plane?" "I have grown bigger since I have come here," Scott told him in the tone of someone who's just read his own death warrant. "So I will probably not fit in my fighter anymore." "Oh, don't you lose sleep over such things!" Merez gave him a toothy smile. "If that's the case, then we'll just have to make some modifications to it. After all, we've never yet captured a plane where Osip would fit in just like that, either but he flies them anyway. That's where we come into the picture." "So you mean you can do something about it?" A twinkle of hope appeared in Scott's eyes. "Sure! Trust us, we can do just about anything," Merez grinned and jumped to sit on a wing. "As long as it's something man-made, we work miracles. And in your case, I think it's mainly the seat that we need to work on. After all, it goes into the cockpit as one piece, and there's got to be enough room to put it in there and make all the connections." Scott's face began to clear and he shot a questioning glance at Lancer who smiled back. "That's right. You just trust Merez, he knows what he's talking about! If he says you'll fly it again, then you will." Scott heaved a huge sigh of relief and the sunny smile returned on his face as his gaze turned once again to caress the sleek metal of the Union aircraft. Lancer swallowed and closed his eyes for a moment. I know you want it, that's what you were made for... but please Scott, not yet. Not quite yet.
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