Outland

by Alan Dean Foster

  Inside the emergency area Lazarus and the paramedics stripped the protective sterilizing sheet from the girl's body, then slid her, gurney and all, into a long, glassine tube. Lazarus moved to the computer console built into the side of the tube and began punching out directions.

  A low hum rose from somewhere beneath the cylinder that started to rotate. Instantly three nearby video screens came awake with a plethora of information. Two displayed diagrammatics of the girl's body, giving reports on everything from skeletal stability to circulatory flow. The third screen was awash with numbers and words delineating blood pressure, temperature, white cell count, and so on.

  O'Niel waited nearby, studying the girl, watching the information change on the monitors, and wished he knew more than minimal medicine. Devoid of its usual coolness, her bruised face looked almost innocent.

  It was worse than he'd guessed at first

  "Jaw looks broken," Lazarus was mumbling. "At least in one place, maybe more. Possibly the nose as well. Contusions all over the body and face. Neck wound is superficial, thank God." She spared time to throw O'Niel a disbelieving glance.

  "Jesus Christ, who did this to her?"

  "A worker." His attention was still on the girl. "Crane operator, supposedly stable as they come. He went nuts. It happens here . . . remember?"

  She gave him a look but spared the sarcasm that instinctively welled up in her. Maybe she deserved the dig. She'd been something less than cordial to O'Niel during their first meeting.

  In any case, this wasn't the time and place for verbal sparring.

  "No skull fractures," she announced, carefully examining the blowup of one diagram. "By the way, I got that list you wanted. She's bleeding internally downstairs. Damn the man, whoever he is and whatever was wrong with him. I'd like to get him in here."

  "You won't. He's dead."

  Lazarus' quick reaction was understandable, if unhippocratic. "Good."

  "Why didn't you bring it to my office?" O'Niel asked her.

  "The list?" She adjusted a control. Inside the cylinder a small nozzle pressed against the girl's bruised belly, then withdrew. It didn't appear to have done anything, but numbers changed rapidly on the third monitor and the girl shifted slightly. "I don't make house calls."

  "You do now." He looked a last time at the girl. "She going to be all right?"

  "Maybe . . . if you let me do my job."

  O'Niel smiled, nodded briefly and moved away.

  Off to the right was a section of white wall lined with large drawers resembling a hive. It served as the mine's morgue. The transparent faces of each drawer were fogged with cold. Lazarus continued working behind him, her sole attention on the girl in the cylinder.

  O'Niel studied the drawers. The fog didn't completely obliterate the interiors and bodies would be visible within. After several minutes of careful inspection a frown broke out on his face. The two examining tables arranged in front of the drawers were unoccupied. A closer look gave no sign that they'd been in recent use.

  A voice sounded from immediately behind him. "Twenty-eight, in six months."

  He turned, saw Lazarus standing nearby. She looked worn, but then she always looked worn.

  "I wonder how many in the six months before that?" he murmured interestedly.

  "Twenty-four. I've got initiative."

  "Good for you."

  He turned back to the wall and began pulling out the body They were clean, antisepticized, and empty.

  Lazarus watched him. "You want to know how many in the six months before that? Hmmm? Go on, ask me how many in the six months before that."

  He turned to her, asked the question with his eyes.

  "Two," she told him.

  "Two." He stared down at her. "You notice anything?"

  "I'm unpleasant," she replied, "but I'm not stupid. Of course I notice something. Funny numbers, and they don't come from the gaming machines in the Club."

  "What do you think?"

  "I don't know what to think." She sounded confused as well as exhausted. "Almost everybody here doesn't have both oars in the water as far as I'm concerned. Why people suddenly start to lose their marbles in greater numbers is not so mystifying to me. I don't know why more of them haven't done it sooner.

  O'Niel pulled out the last drawer. It was as vacant as the others, the sheets unstained, the air inside fragrant with ammonia and other disinfectants. He shut the drawer with a vicious push.

  The morgue's lack of occupants raised several interesting questions, foremost among them being the fact that Sagan's body wasn't anywhere to be found. He could think of excuses for the other empty drawers, but the crane operator ought to be resting quietly in one of them.

  "Where do they send the bodies?"

  "They usually put them on the first shuttle out. They wrap them up and jettison the body halfway to the support station. Burial at sea and all that crap." Lazarus was not a closet romantic. To welcomed realists, dealt harshly with displaced dreamers.

  "The Company tries to pass it off as glamorous and proper. You know, 'we now commend his body to the vast reaches of the frontier he helped to push back a little farther.' What they're doing is saving freight charges back to Earth, or wherever home was. It's efficient. It sucks, but it's efficient."

  Very efficient, O'Niel had to agree.

  The freight dock was deserted. It was the largest pressurized structure on Io. When the shuttle docked the cavernous chamber was a sea of activity with men and machines swarming around the shuttle in an attempt to complete their tasks in the shortest possible time. Huge hopper cars were raised and their preprocessed ore dumped into the shuttle's cargo bays. Containers and people flowed out of the bulky vessel.

  There no shuttle sealed to the dock now. The next ore load wasn't due from the mine 'til the end of the night shift. Relays snapped and clicked as machinery hummed in man's absence, performing maintenance and checking functions that had once required human supervision.

  Everything functioned smoothly. The dock waited in silence for the next scheduled burst of activity.

  High-intensity funnel lights hung from long tubes keeping portions of the dock illuminated. At the far end of the chamber was the huge airlock which would open to envelop the arriving shuttle. It was well lit. Much of the rest of the dock and its mountains of containers and ore carriers lay in darkness.

  Something flitted from one shadow to the next, dodging cautiously around the bright pools of light that fell from above. It was small compared to the massive ore carriers. There was no one around to notice the movement.

  From time to time the figure would pause to check the sealed bills of lading heat-stamped into each outgoing container. The larger ones the figure ignored. It was the non-ore carriers that occupied its interest. Every container had the Con-Amalgamated company logo stamped prominently on sides and top.

  O'Niel moved stealthily from one container to the next, always checking to make sure he was alone. He'd worked his way across the length of the dock before he came across two containers near the airlock transship loader which bore stamps of interest.

  His gaze traveled over the nearest, noting the bill of lading and list of contents, the word "fragile" stamped below the manifest. After careful perusal of the inventory be moved on to inspect the second container. Instead of fragile it carried the imprinted instructions, "To Be Jettisoned" on one side.

  A last cautionary glance revealed nothing moving in the vast docking chamber. O'Niel's breathing seemed unnaturally loud to him as he methodically unsnapped the four latches which sealed the container's north end. Each let free with a booming metallic click as it was released. O'Niel caught his breath at each snap, but no one arrived to investigate.

  Using both hands and getting his weight behind the effort he heaved the sliding panel to the right. He snapped on his flashlight and began probing the container's interior.

  The beam danced over long stacks of metal boxes, sealed cylinders, plastic cubes, and heat-sealed lumps of gar
bage: Each bore the ancient triple red triangle that warned of the presence of radioactive waste. The mine and its complex equipment was wholly solar-powered, but many individual sections like the hospital used radioactive components, as did certain pieces of equipment.

  Buried near the lower left side of the container was a silver mylar sack. Full of lumps, it seemed out of place alongside the sleek disposable radiation packs.

  O'Niel checked the warning patch sewn into the right sleeve of his jacket. It was still bright green and showed no tendency toward turning yellow or worse, orange. Io's radioactive wastes were strictly low-grade. He could safely carry out his little inspection.

  The bag was sealed with a plastic zipper. He broke the snap-seal and pulled the tab down. Hair appeared first. It was quickly followed by a forehead, then a nose flanked by a pair of eyes still frozen open.

  O'Niel didn't linger on the silent, accusing face. The heavy zipper was dragged down until the red-stained padding that covered the hole in Sagan's chest was exposed. O'Niel fumbled at his breast pocket. For an instant he thought he'd lost it. Then his fingers closed around the shaft of the power syringe.

  He paused, wiped a forearm across his eyes, and took a couple of deep breaths. Then he positioned the syringe precisely over the artery at the base of the dead man's neck. The liquid inside the corpse no longer flowed; the internal pump had been stilled. But the power draw in the syringe pulled a thick blue-red fluid up into the tube.

  For once he had reason to be grateful for the Company's penurious policies. Since the body was about to be consigned forever to the limitless graveyard of space, there was no need for embalming. What the syringe sucked out of poor Sagan's system was still a part of him . . .

  VI

  The beeping wouldn't go away.

  Ever since she was a little girl she'd been tormented by nightmares and their sounds. You'll outgrow them, she'd been told by fatuous adults and doctors. They're only figments of your imagination, sent by the boogeyman to bedevil your girlish dreams.

  Bullshit.

  If anything, there was a period of adulthood when her somnolent imaginings had been more terrifying than anything she'd conjured up as a child. That had finally faded away.

  Now the occasional, bad dream was simply a familiar and unwelcome visitor, to be tolerated for a little while and then sent on its way. Like an in-law, she mused.

  It was a funny thing, though. During her first tour she'd discovered that sleeping off-Earth lessened the frequency of her nightmares, kept them almost at bay. Once again, doctors' explanations proved useless.

  She didn't much care. The further out from Earth she traveled, the rarer her nightmares came a-visiting. It was a phenomenon other travelers had remarked on, and it was driving the psychiatrists crazy. Fair enough, she thought.

  Io was about as far out as you could get, unless you were part of the deep-probe team still coasting toward far Neptune, or with the present team that was preparing Titan for exploitation. She was way past being probe material, or even preset. No, Io was as far out as she'd ever get. If it weren't for the peacefulness granted by the absence of the nightmares, she'd have returned to the warm Earth long ago.

  It's all in your mind, her psych friends had assured her. You've cured yourself. If you go home you'll be safe from bad dreams. You'll see.

  All in her mind? She'd heard that one before, as a child. Anyway, there were other reasons for remaining Outland. For one thing, she had no home to go back to. No relatives, no roots. Not anymore. Not for some time.

  Now she lived within the narrow diameter of test vial and microscope, which were room enough to house her remaining aspirations. Her only other real concern was simply to continue To Get Through the Night.

  She tossed on the bed. It had been months since anything this strong had troubled her. The beeping continued relentlessly, vibrating inside her skull. There was no imagery associated with it. Peculiar . . . a purely aural nightmare. An intriguing thought: perhaps it wasn't a nightmare at all.

  She opened her eyes, blinked at the darkness. The beeping continued.

  Too tired to curse, she rolled over and acknowledged the com call. The voice at the other end was deep, persistent, vaguely familiar. She tried to make some sense out of it, mumbling groggily, "Hello?"

  "Lazarus, this is O'Niel," the voice announced tersely. "I'll see you in the hospital right away."

  She struggled to a sitting position. Fumbling fingers found the reading light suspended over the bed. The hospital lit up and she pushed aside the sheets covering the examination table she'd been sleeping on.

  A glance at the luminescent wall chronometer did nothing to improve her temper. "Do you know what time it is?"

  "Yes."

  "You better be dying." She hung up.

  It was better than a real nightmare, but not much. Waking had its own terror. She set the com receiver back in its slot and slid her legs over the side of the table. By the light of the reading lamp she staggered over to the nearest basin, threw cold water on her face and roughly toweled it dry. Makeup she didn't bother with, having given up on that long ago in favor of more subtle maskery.

  True to his words, the Marshal arrived moments later. In one hand he held a syringe which Lazarus' practised eye immediately noted was full of something organic. He held it out to her, breathing hard.

  "Very pretty," she commented drily, studying the proferred cylinder.

  "So are you. I need this analyzed."

  "You woke me at this hour for a goddanm analysis?" She was too upset to be really angry.

  "It's important." Something in his voice told her that he was probably understating.

  Even so, she growled at him. "It'd better be."

  She led him over to a console, studied it a moment and then touched several controls. Small video screens came to life, a rack with four tubes held in tiny metal fingers popped out of the wall.

  Measuring quickly but precisely she split the contents of the syringe between the four tubes, then touched another control. The rack slid back into the wall. The laboratory area remained dark, the only light coming from the powered-up screens and keyboard and the distant reading light burning above the examination table.

  O'Niel searched cold twilight, found a chair, and pulled it close to the console.

  "How long will this take?"

  "You're kidding me. This is a hospital, not a security depot. When we ask questions, that means we need answers fast." She pointed to the screens, where rows of information were already beginning to materialize.

  O'Niel indicated the first column. "What does that mean?"

  "Nothing much." She squinted in the dim light, studying the readout. "Blood type, cholesterol count, white cell count, oxygenation . . . this blood is from a dead person. Or else somebody beyond my help."

  "Right the first time."

  She smiled thinly. "The symptoms are pretty plain. Unfortunately, the condition's not curable." More information appeared, forming glowing lines on the screens.

  "No alcohol," she muttered. There was another run of data as the analyzer continued its methodical breakdown of the liquid O'Niel had fed it.

  "He ate dinner," she soon announced. "Proteins, carbohydrates . . . more carbohydrates. He didn't eat his vegetables. Low sugar count . . . no dessert tonight. That's unusual."

  "Why?" O'Niel wondered.

  "Because that's usually the only thing they serve in the worker's mess that's fit to eat." Another pause before she muttered, "No nicotine." A longer one before she said, "Some tranquilizers."

  O'Niel leaned forward, trying to make sense of the squiggles filling the screens. "Tranquilizers? Are you sure?"

  "Yeah." She chewed her lower lip as she fingered additional keys. "They're Company tranquilizers. Standard issue. Why the query?"

  "Because the former owner of this blood was acting anything but tranquil not so very long ago."

  "Yeah? He's plenty tranquil now." Her attention returned to the steadily lengthen
ing columns of information. They continued to grow, but more slowly. The basics were known about the blue red liquid. Further analysis required more complex procedures.

  "Blood sugar and hemoglobin are normal . . . were normal. Nothing wrong with his brain, nervous system checks out." She frowned. "Hello."

  "What?"

  She seemed uncertain and her frown deepened. "I'm not sure. Funny."

  Fingers fluttered above a different combination of keys, finally settled on a pattern. In the upper corner of the center screen a new pattern appeared. She touched additional keys. The pattern didn't change.

  "Shit."

  She tried still another combination, then shook her head in frustration.

  "What's the matter?" O'Niel asked.

  "Such a smart piece of equipment," she gestured at the console, "and a wreck like me trying to run it." She nodded toward a fourth screen. It was alight now, but blank. "That's where I want it to come up."

  "Want what to come up?"

  "Whatever it is. Take it easy. I'm not through yet." Again her hands played with the keys and buttons. The fourth screen remained blank.

  Finally she leaned back in her own chair, crossed her arms, and spoke without taking her eyes from the brightly glowing columns filling the center three screens.

  "You know, you don't have your medical all-star here, O'Niel. Company doctors are like the old-time ship doctors. Most are one shuttle flight ahead of a malpractice suit. A decent physician isn't going to come way the hell Outland to someplace like Io where it's cold and lonely. Not when she can stay home and buy twenty acres outside of Suva or Ponape to work out of."

  "Something's there, isn't it?" He was pointing at the glowing screens.

  "Maybe. Just maybe." She uncrossed her arms and attacked the keys once more.

  "I spend my days dispensing tranquilizers to the workers, uppers to management for their amusement . . . yeah, I know that's illegal. So what? You gonna arrest me?" He didn't react to the challenge. She rambled on, still working the console by touch and trial.

  "Also certifying that the Company prostitutes don't have syphilis, Take two aspirin and call me in the morning. That's a doctor joke, remember? I'm a doctor joke." She glanced up at him, the lines in her face deepened by the dim light.