The Myriad: Tour of the Merrimack #1 Read Online Free PDF

word with you?” Confidentially, Mo Shah’s tone added.
    So Farragut strode aft to the medic’s compartment. Detecting the concern in the MO’s voice over the control room intercom, Colonel Steele came along as well.
    Images of aliens lit up all of the medical officer’s screens—pictures of innards, things recognizable as lungs, hearts, guts. Dr. Shah followed the captain’s alarmed stare, hurried to interpret the images. “Oh. These are not being signs of slaughter. These are being medical communications. Physicians conferring with each other, I am believing.”
    “Human?”
    “Humanoid.” Mo clicked off the monitors. Mo was a placid man, a Riverite, with great brown puppy eyes and a calming voice. Mo Shah’s forehead extended halfway up his scalp. He folded his hands and faced his captain. “I am wanting to tell you about your Roman.”
    Augustus had become John Farragut’s Roman ever since he had come aboard. No one else wanted him.
    “He did not pass the drug scan,” Dr. Shah reported.
    Farragut pursed his lips. Spoke at last: “What’s he doing?”
    “The whole pharmacy,” Mo answered. “And the R&D lab.”
    Captain Farragut took a guess, “Does this drug use have to do with his alterations?”
    “I asked him that. He asked in return if I were deferring to Roman medical authority. I said no. So he told me to be making my own diagnosis.”
    “He has a chip on his shoulder,” said Farragut.
    Mo shrugged. “If you are wanting to call Gibraltar a chip, it is being a chip. I am thinking he wanted me to bust him.”
    “Apparently you didn’t.”
    “I considered it. I checked what we are knowing of Roman medicine—which is not being much. Palatine are being very tight-lipped about their patterners. They are not sharing that technology. So I checked Roman law, and there is being a specific exemption for patterners regarding use of controlled substances.”
    “What kind of exemption?”
    “Drug use is being entirely at a patterner’s own discretion. He may be carrying. He may be using. He may not be selling, and Augustus is not doing so. So I cleared him. But it is being your boat, Captain.”
    Farragut could still throw Augustus in the brig. “Did he bring drugs aboard?”
    The MO nodded. “Quantities consistent with personal use.”
    “Is he coherent?”
    “Much too coherent, I am thinking.”
    Farragut nodded with a slight snort. At their first meeting, Augustus had communicated his thoughts and feelings with great clarity and brevity.
    Mo continued, “Augustus’ medical jacket is only going back eight years. In fact, his whole jacket is only going back eight years, which could be when he was augmented. He has filaments in his muscle tissue. I am not knowing how the Roman doctors strung it.”
    “What kind of filaments?”
    “Some are being reinforcements, I am thinking. Others are being electrical connections for his plugging into patterner mode.”
    “Patterner mode? ” Farragut had assumed a patterner was a patterner; like John Farragut was a captain. It was not a mode that turned off and on.
    Mo explained, “He must be making connections to his augmentations, plugging cables between parts of himself, to be enabling his functions as a patterner.”
    Farragut gave his head a quick shake as if to shake the weird idea out. He was not sure he understood. Asked slowly, “So when Augustus is not ‘enabled,’ he’s like the rest of us?”
    “No. In ways I am not at all sure of, he is not being like us. His gunsights—these,” Mo Shah lifted a hand to Colonel Steele’s gunsights, black bars implanted on either side of the colonel’s eyes. “Augustus is having these, too.”
    Farragut made a motion like a shrug. “So Augustus’ sights are camouflaged better.”
    “Augustus’ gunsights are being inside his eyes,” said Mo. “And he is being stronger.”
    “How strong?” Colonel Steele crossed his arms. Even in defensive posture, for the size of his arms and breadth of his