by Marie Dry
“I am open to more trades,” he said very seriously.
As if he didn’t just shock her out of her mind with that kiss, he motioned to the doors that opened. She’d really like to know how the door knew he wanted them open. She didn’t want to ask, because if she heard one more sarcastic comment on how stupid humans were and how superior Zyrgin technology was beyond her feeble human brain, she’d kill him. “I will think about it,” she said. Would he want to kiss her badly enough to trade some of his medical technology? Did she want anything badly enough to turn kisses that should be free and spontaneous into a commodity?
They walked outside and, suddenly, she wanted to jump up and down in excitement. For the first time, it occurred to her that he’d flown the others in his space ship when they went on the visits. “Are you carrying us there in your space ship?”
“No, I am flying us there in a shuttle.”
Madison rolled her eyes--shuttle space ship, what’s the difference? Both of them flew. “Do you know how to fly it?”
He walked up to her, leaned down until that green face with its blood red eyes and sharp cheekbones hovered less than an inch from hers. “I am a Zyrgin. Zyrgins are superior to humans. I can drive any vehicle perfectly.”
She snorted rudely. His eyes turned even redder, and she didn’t think that could be possible. They tried to outstare each other for long minutes and then he took her arm and steered her outside. The staff they passed in the hallways gave them a wide berth.
A silver box-like craft stood behind the hospital. It had more rounded curves than a box, but it was the best description she could come up with. As with his office doors, the shuttle door slid open without him giving a command or pressing any buttons. He went in ahead of her and, once inside, she was disappointed to see a console with very little in the way of buttons and two pilot seats in front of it. At the back, it had only a hard-looking bench.
“Sit here,” he said and pointed to the bench.
Madison wanted to tell him she wasn’t his dog, but she looked forward to flying in a real space ship so she bit back the words and sat down. He touched something in the wall and two silver belts crossed over her chest. He checked the belts and then stilled, touched her lips with a forefinger with wicked looking talons. “When I give you the Eduki pelt we will kiss many times.”
He went to the console and sat down in the pilot seat on the right. The shuttle smelled different--not bad just different and she couldn’t pinpoint it. Madison touched her lips. What did he mean when he gave her the Eduki pelt. She opened her mouth to ask him and then abruptly closed it. This was her first time flying, she wanted to enjoy every moment.
She looked around at the sterile interior. It reminded her of Viglar’s office. The aliens didn’t seem to like any decoration. Did they keep things like that on their big space ship or was it the way they lived? No one had ever seen a female alien, maybe they didn’t have families.
“Can’t I sit next to you?”
He turned to face her. “You sit on the bench.”
Deeply offended, she glared at him. “Aren’t you afraid I’ll harm you when your back is turned? After all, the resistance tried to blow you up.”
He got up and stalked her. She had to work real hard at not shrinking back. He leaned over her in an unpleasant intimidating way she didn’t appreciate at all. “You are resistance?”
“No, I’m not. But I could’ve been.”
The resistance had approached her after that unfortunate broadcast, but she’d not been interested. She was a doctor. She saved people, she didn’t blow them up.
“No human could harm me, even if they manage to get through the safety control, could creep up on me from behind,” he said and turned back to the console.
She sincerely hoped some human proved him wrong one day. She’d like to be there the day he had to admit that he wasn’t as superior as he thought he was.
They lifted up with a jerky motion. He pressed something on the console with an aggressive move and growled at it. The shuttle smoothed out, but Madison’s stomach refused to follow suit.
“Why did you work so many hours before I came?” he asked once they were in the air. “The logs show you worked double the amount the other humans worked.
He thought all humans had to be driven to work. “I enjoy my work and we are always short staffed. I can’t turn my back when someone needs help.”
She’d work thirty-hour days if it meant she never had to stand by helpless while someone died. The promise she made to her sister was more important than any tiredness she felt. He swerved and her stomach roiled with the shuttle.
“Your arms and legs are too thin. You look as if you’ve been put together with wooden twigs. I will reduce your hours.”
Madison gnashed her teeth. He really knew how to throw out insults. “It’s considered extremely rude to make such remarks about women. And while we’re talking about that, let me also tell you that calling my freckles spots is extremely rude.”
“I do not care about rudeness. I will keep you healthy.”
She didn’t like the sound of that. As if he planned to take a close interest in her. Her heart hammered, but she told it to behave, she could do without any added attention from him. He already checked up on what she ate and how much she ate. Sandra would have a field day if Madison had to spend any more time in his office. She searched for something that would change the subject away from her and him keeping her healthy. “So what’s your excuse?”
“Excuse for what? I am a Zyrgin, I do not need an excuse.”
She sighed. “I meant why you are working all hours of the day.”
“Zyrgins do not need to eat and rest and sleep all the time like weak humans. We are a hardworking people with honor. You will increase your intake of food human.”
“Excuse me.”
“You are too thin for a woman of twenty-eight. Even with your abnormal shortness you are too thin.”
“Abnormal shortness. I’m average height for a woman. There’s nothing abnormal about it.” If she wasn’t careful, he’d destroy any self-esteem she had. Spotted and abnormally short as she apparently was. “And you already nose around everything I eat so you know there’s no need for me to eat more.” She was beginning to feel like an animal fed for slaughter.
“I will correct your weight problem. Altering your height at your advanced age would be too risky.”
“I don’t have a weight problem. And what do you mean my advanced age?” Then the import of what he’d said struck her. “Wait a minute, you can correct people’s height? If you can do that what else can you do? Do you have the cure for cancer?”
“I do not need the cure for cancer. It was discovered during your so-called golden age, your pharmaceutical companies ensured it was never developed.”
Madison clenched her fists. The absolute humiliation of being told how unscrupulous and short sighted humans had acted by this superior pain in her butt was excruciating. She didn’t doubt for one moment that he was telling the truth. Even now the pharmaceutical companies were more concerned with profit than finding any cures. Her stomach that had been acting up since they took off gave another unpleasant turn.
“How do you know this, have you found the records?”
“I have gone through your primitive database and found mention of the cure in several places and recordings of communications between pharmaceutical companies.”
“I see.” She’d spend as much time as she could on the TC, searching the database. Imagine the amount of suffering that could be relieved if she could find that cure. Could the information have been on the net? Before and during the golden age, a worldwide net had been used to communicate and store data. It had collapsed and signaled the end of the golden age. Soft Cell created the TC and managed to transfer most of the information to the new system. Though communication between continents had never been the same since. Now she had to wonder how much information was transferred to the TC. And who decided what got tra
nsferred over and what was left out?
“Will you give us the information you found on the cure?”
“Yes.”
Madison’s brain was spinning, she couldn’t comprehend the thought of getting the cure for cancer this easily. Instead she focused on the shuttle flight that didn’t seem to agree with her system. The ride was so smooth that she couldn’t feel them move. After a while, the wall next to her turned to some kind of clear metal. She looked at the landscape under them and her stomach turned and kept turning. She loved the view, but she didn’t do so well with the movement beneath them. By the time they landed with a jerk, she was hot and so queasy she couldn’t wait to get outside in the fresh air.
“Get this off me,” she said through gritted teeth. If she opened her mouth, she’d lose her breakfast right here.
“Patience, human.”
“Now, alien.”
He grunted something and the safety belts receded into the wall. The door opened and she could’ve cried in relief when she felt the fresh breeze. She staggered outside. He followed her when she tried to get away from him and kept following her. She lost the battle with her nausea and decorated his nice alien boots with the contents of her stomach.
This time when she moved away, he didn’t follow. At last, her stomach stopped rebelling and, wiping her mouth, she reluctantly turned to face him. If anyone had told her someone threw up on the alien’s boots, she would’ve enjoyed it tremendously. Being the one who did it and having to face a huge alien afterward was another story.
His boots were clean, for which she was grateful. If she had to clean them, she might have thrown up again. “I’m sorry, but you should’ve stayed away from me when you realized I wanted privacy.”
Without a word, he stepped up to her, ran his silver thingy over her, and pressed something that stung against her neck. He did it so fast she didn’t have time to evade him. The lingering nausea and trembling subsided. Something tugged at her memory, the feeling that this had happened before. She narrowed her eyes at him. “Have you ever injected me without my knowledge before?”
“Follow me, human.” He turned and walked toward a long square building.
“I’m talking to you, alien. And its customary to explain to someone what you are going to do before you inject them. I might have an objection against having foreign substances put into my body.”
He ignored her and kept walking toward the building. Madison looked around and frowned. This was no town. The neat building had smaller buildings surrounding it, but this couldn’t be No Name Town. “I thought the orphanage and shelter was in No Name Town?”
“The orphanage is on the edge of the town, but we built the shelter here to keep the women safe from unwanted attention.” He said.
She frowned and stopped walking. She was a doctor, someone who should help people. Why didn’t she treat people like this? The patients at the hospital could all afford the treatment, so why hadn’t she worried about the people who couldn’t afford it before? Shouldn’t everyone have access to doctors? Ana would have been concerned with the people who couldn’t pay who needed medical care.
“Keep up, human.”
Pulling a face at him, she started walking again, running until she could walk next to him. She didn’t know why it bothered her so much when the other doctors follow meekly behind him when he wanted them to go anywhere with him. She would make him treat her like an equal and not a minion following in his wake.
“And don’t make faces at me.”
She frowned at him. “How did you--never mind. I’m keeping up and my face is suitably expressionless.”
“Superior Zyrgin eyes.”
“Figures,” she mumbled.
Inside the square building, they had a small clinic. The room was packed with women, some with black eyes; some holding their bodies at odd angles; and some lying on beds, clearly too sick to move. Madison struggled against the sense of distance, of tunnel vision, the lack of oxygen. What if she couldn’t help them? What if she didn’t know enough? What if one of them had the one problem she never learned.
‘Help me Maddie, please make the pain go away.’
For one horrendous moment, she couldn’t hear anything above the voice in her head haunting her.
“Human, stop being useless and start work,” Viglar growled at her and it jerked her out of her nightmare.
Trying to smile at the women, she started at the closest bed. Most of the women lying down had the latest flu strain, which could be serious if they didn’t receive adequate care. She opened her bag and took out the medication she’d brought with her. It wouldn’t be enough.
“Human, this clinic has a fully stocked pharmacy. Write down what you prescribe on your primitive TC and it will be filled out.” Viglar spoke without looking up from the women whose neck he was carefully palpitating. How did he do that? She’d had a good look at the back of his head a few times and he didn’t have a set of extra eyes there.
From the day she started at the hospital, she’d never been able to write prescriptions without worrying that they couldn’t be filled out. The reality was that there was just too many people for the amount of medication the Earth could produce. At least now, most of the medication wasn’t smuggled out of the hospital by syndicates. She assumed it wasn’t happening anymore because Viglar hadn’t chopped off anymore heads. Feeling decadent she wrote prescriptions without having to prescribe smaller doses to try and help more people.
They treated black eyes and broken bones, and she handed out relaxants to a few obviously traumatized women.
They treated scrapes and a few illnesses, but mostly it was new arrivals suffering from neglect and malnutrition. How did she go through life and through medical school without realizing how much suffering existed in the world?
Then there was shouting and hurrying feet, and a woman was brought in on a stretcher. There was blood everywhere and her intestines were outside her body. Madison stood staring, trying to get her mind to think, to work out a course of action that would save the woman. She had to save her. She couldn’t stand by and allow her to die. It would be her fault for not knowing enough. For being too small and ignorant to help her.
Then Viglar was there, motioning for the two men to lift her onto the bed. He went to work with that scanner of his. Various instruments appeared and disappeared from his hands, and Madison could only stare in admiration as he literally healed the woman.
“He’s remarkable,” the nurse said. Viglar hadn’t introduced her to the staff and had told her to get back to work when she’d done it herself. The nurse smiled at Madison. “I’d rather do night duty for the rest of my life than work with him every day, but he is remarkable.”
“Do you know her?” Madison asked the question, but all she could think of was that if she’d been alone here, the woman would’ve died. What good did two years of study and a year of internship do her if she couldn’t save anybody?
The nurse sighed. “Yes, this isn’t the first time her husband did this to her, and I am afraid it won’t be the last. Margaret has talked to her so many times, but she keeps going back to him.”
“Margaret?” Madison should go and help Viglar, but her feet wouldn’t move. Wouldn’t take her closer to the woman whose death she would’ve caused if she’d depended on Madison to save her.
The nurse suddenly became busy. “She volunteers sometimes, such sad eyes,” she murmured and then paled. “Please excuse me, I still have a lot of work to do.”
Now who would Margaret be, that the woman didn’t want to talk about her? Maybe she was a female alien. Normally, Madison would’ve pushed for more information but she had the overwhelming urge to be outside in the fresh air.
Viglar stepped back from the woman whose stomach now only showed a thin white line, like skin already starting to heal. She slept peacefully, but Madison could see the black smudges under her eyes.
She rushed outside and leaned against the wall, taking deep breaths of fresh air.
<
br /> “Are you all right, human?”
She didn’t even care that he called her human, but she also didn’t want to tell him how insecure in her own knowledge she felt. “Just needed some fresh air. That was amazing, what you just did.”
“Human males have no honor. If she was weak, she could be put down humanely. To harm her like this is typical human behavior.”
Madison forgot her insecurities, Ana’s voice haunting her. “Put her down? Are you crazy? You don’t put down people for being weak. Is that what you do on your planet?”
“It used to be common practice for the good of everyone. Customs are changing. Our Leader has taken a weak woman and that is creating changes.”
“Changes that you don’t agree with?”
“We do not need to put down weak Zyrgins anymore. With our conquest of more fruitful planets our resources have grown.” She didn’t like his answer, as if he didn’t want to admit it, but he agreed with the practice of killing the weak.
“Well, that’s a surprise. I thought you’d say you strongly disagree with the new merciful trend. Though you are a doctor, which would prevent you from killing someone who is weak and defenseless.”
“Why would that stop me?”
Madison sighed and slapped her forehead. “Please, can we go back now? I can’t take anymore today. No wait.”
He waited and she thought about the haunted faces of the women inside the shelter. “They need a psychiatrist.” She disliked having to ask him for something like that. There should be shelters built by humans that had medical staff and psychiatrists.
