by S. L. Viehl
This time one of the male interns spoke up. “Her parent replicated his own cells and genetically enhanced them to change her gender as well as her physiology.”
“That’s correct. You get to skip the pop quiz I’m giving later.” I placed the chart back in the holder at the end of the exam table. “The end result was Dr. Cherijo Grey Veil, cloned and refined and engineered from birth to be the perfect physician. Would anyone like to take a stab at diagnosing her current condition?” I showed them some of my teeth. “I’m dying to know what it is.”
“She is violating an order of bed rest,” a low voice said from behind me.
I glanced back at the Senior Healer. Three- armed, one-legged, pink-hided with a bald head and a nest of white, thin, prehensile, meter- long gildrells around his mouth, the Omorr surgeon was my best friend and one of my oldest colleagues.
Judging by the flush currently darkening his features, he was also as pissed off as I was.
“Don’t forget appropriating medical staff and using diagnostic equipment without proper authorization,” I reminded him. “Nice to see you, Senior Healer. They told me you were on Joren.” Although how he got there, I had no clue.
“I was. I jaunted out on a scout to meet the ship. Leave us,” Squilyp said to the others as he hopped around to stand on the opposite side of the table.
Suppressing various expressions, gestures, and sounds of relief, the interns and nurses almost trampled one another trying to get out of the entry panel.
The Omorr smelled a little like bile, and looked tired, or older—or maybe both. A lot of things had changed, and I didn’t know why, but I was about to find out.
Or else.
“How many transitions did it take for you to get here,” I asked, “and how many times did you puke?”
“Seven jumps,” he said. “I vomited twice. What are you doing?”
“I’m putting together a workup on Dr. Grey Veil here.” Or, at least, the dimensional image of her. I was the original, the prototype, the living, breathing version of the simulated woman who currently lay on my exam table, naked and flat on her back. My back. Whatever. “I thought it might be helpful in finding out what the hell is going on, since no one is telling me anything.”
He started to say something, and then changed his mind. “You were advised to stay in your berth.”
“I’ll be happy to do that. Just as soon as I know how I got on this ship, where it is, who swapped out the crew, and what happened to my injuries.”
“You don’t remember?”
I folded my arms. “What do you think?”
“What have you been told?”
“Basically? Nothing. Every time I ask, they railroad me with some nonsense about psychological trauma. They removed nearly all the entries from my chart, and I’ve been locked out of the medical database.” I brushed aside a thick section of her/our hair, creating a part along one side of her/our head. “Is this where I got conked? How bad was it?”
“I cannot say.” He glanced at the simulation to avoid looking at me. “We were not present when you were injured, and the damage healed before you were recovered.”
Obviously, or now I’d be leaking blood or brain matter all over the deck. “Then show me what you extrapolated from my scans after you took me back from the League.”
“I do not have all the details on the incident—”
“Goddamn it, Squilyp.” The last shred of my patience finally parted ways with my temper. “Tell me what the hell happened to me.”
Shouting at him stiffened his gildrells into icicles—a sure sign he was offended—but he only addressed the control console. “Display program variation C-1.”
Like an invisible killer with an unseen ax, the imager erased a good chunk of my twin’s skull, vaporizing the bone and exposing the brain tissue. It was such a brutal injury that for a moment I forgot to breathe.
How could I have survived this? I felt ready to puke myself now. Thanks to my enhanced immune system, I could physically survive almost anything, but mentally . . . emotionally . . . “That’s what that League pirate did to me?”
“Based on the initial head series I performed, and the few details we were able to garner from one eye-witness, this approximates the wound you sustained after your transport crash-landed on the surface of Akkabarr.”
I glanced up. “What are you talking about? I wasn’t anywhere near Akkabarr. I was on that dinky Rilken ship. One of Shropana’s jackasses boarded it before he smacked me in the head with the end of a pulse rifle.” I regarded the simulation again. “There’s no way he did this much damage, unless he kept bashing my skull in after I fell unconscious.”
“That is the last thing you remember?” he asked. “Being assaulted on the Rilken ship?”
“That’s the last thing that happened to me.” I didn’t like the careful way he was talking to me. “Right?”
“Ah, no.” His gildrells coiled into knots of agitation. “You were abducted and taken to Akkabarr by a League operative, but the atmospheric conditions caused your transport to crash on the surface. There you were attacked by a group of natives, and shot.” He touched the control panel, creating a second, independent image of the brain and projecting the ruined organ above the body, where it slowly revolved. “Due to the weapon being fired at almost point-blank range, it caused considerable damage to the brain center, as well as significant vascular trauma and a substantial amount of tissue destruction.”
I resisted the urge to touch my head. “You’re telling me that after this League ship I was on crashed, the natives dragged me out of the wreckage, shot me in the head, and blew out half of my brains.” He nodded, and I took in a shaky breath. “Any particular reason why?”
“As it was explained to me,” he said, “they wished to kill and partially dismember you in order to collect a bounty from their masters.”
“Partially dismember?” I almost shrieked.
“They skin the faces of unauthorized intruders,” he explained, “which they trade for various rewards from their masters.”
“Remind me never to jaunt to Akkabarr again.” Not that I’d wanted to go in the first place. I took another good look at the holoimage. “What happened after that?”
“I cannot be certain,” he said, not looking at me again, “but scans indicate that the tissue and bone spontaneously regenerated, probably within a matter of days. It was during that time that, I believe, you entered the primary phase of an extended dissociative fugue state.”
“Getting shot in the head gave me an identity disorder.” I snickered. “Sure. Who did I think I was? A P’Kotman with clogged mouth pores?”
“No.” He seemed to be searching for words again. “Cherijo, do you recall anything else? Anything at all? Do you remember where you were or what you saw after the League soldier attacked you?”
“I woke up here, in Medical.” His expression and my lack of wounds told me that couldn’t be correct. “Squilyp, just how long was I unconscious?”
He had to try three times before he could speak. “I regret to say that you were abducted and taken to Akkabarr nearly five years ago.”
All the strength went out of my legs, and I groped for a stool. Not five days, or five weeks. Not even five months. Five years. Absently I heard myself ask, “Did you try to bring me out of the coma before now?”
“Cherijo.” He hopped around the exam table and bent his knee until he could look into my eyes. “There were some residual effects, but to our knowledge, you never became comatose.”
“What?” I was still trying to process what he’d said. “Okay. So, where did the five years go? Did I freeze on that ice ball or something?”
“This will be difficult for you to accept.” He wrapped the sensitive and extremely dexterous web of tissues at the end of his arms around my hands. “The attack destroyed your mind. You were lost to us.”
“I’m right here, and my mind is working perfectly,” I reminded him. “What did you do when you found me? You didn’t put me
in stasis, did you? Not for five years.”
“There was no need. When we recovered you from Akkabarr, you were conscious and cognizant and functional.” He hesitated. “You had acquired another personality. An Akkabarran persona.”
I started to laugh, and just as quickly stopped. “You’re saying that I’ve been a different person for the last five years of my life?” He nodded. “You know, if this is some kind of sick, tasteless practical joke to get back at me for being captured by the Rilkens, I will never forgive you or anyone else involved.”
“Your memory center—along with possibly one-third of your brain tissue—was destroyed after the crash. Nothing of your personality remained.” He put his membranes on my shoulders. “You were not unconscious, Cherijo. You were gone. After we recovered you from the Iisleg, I tried everything to bring you back. When nothing worked, I had to assume that the head injury had killed you.”
“Unless you toss me into the nearest star or molecular disintegration unit, I can’t be killed, and you know it.” I rose and stepped away so that he wasn’t touching me anymore. “Try again.”
“I wish I had the answers you seek.” Squilyp reached over and switched off the imager, and the body of my twin vanished. “We must speak of what has happened since you . . . when your body was occupied by—”
Oh, no, we didn’t.
I turned and walked out into Medical Bay, letting the door shut off Squilyp’s babbling. All the nurses working that shift had stopped whatever they were doing and now stood staring at me.
They’d been doing this nonsense practically since I’d woken up. “Hello. Anyone know where my clothes are?” Silence. “How about my husband? Duncan Reever? He waiting around somewhere?”
Everyone looked at each other and then at the deck. No one said a word to me.
“Thanks a lot.” The thought of something alien occupying any part of me made my skin crawl, and I marched over to a garment storage unit and yanked out a set of scrubs.
No one tried to stop me from using the cleansing unit. Lucky them.
Showering and dressing in the scrubs calmed me down and made me feel a little more like myself, but as soon as I stepped out, I found the Omorr waiting for me.
“You cannot leave,” he said, hopping in front of me to block my path to the main door panels. “I have not discharged you.”
“You never admitted me,” I countered. “I want to see Reever. Get out of my way.”
“I understand how you must feel,” he said, until I looked him in the eye. “No, of course, I cannot imagine what this must be like for you.”
“Take a nap for sixty months,” I suggested as I tried to go around him. When he cut me off a second time, I grabbed the front of his blue and white surgeon’s tunic. “You don’t want to do this with me, Doctor. I want to see Duncan. And Marel. Right now.”
“You will, soon.” He covered my fist with his web of a hand. “I promise. All I ask is that you allow me to assure you are well, and that there is no danger of a relapse.”
“How?”
“I must examine you,” he said, and, before I could tell him what I thought of that, added, “We do not yet know if your condition is stable.”
“As long as no one tries to blow my head off again, I should be just peachy.” I wasn’t sure I’d ever go to sleep again voluntarily, but that wasn’t my immediate problem. “Where’s Reever? Why isn’t he here with me? Where is my daughter?”
“Reever is on the ship,” he assured me. “Marel is waiting for you both on Joren.”
The last time I’d left them, they had been together on the CloudWalk. Everything was so screwed up I hardly knew what to think. Had something happened between me and Reever? Had that thing that took over my body—
A surge of panic shot through me. “Squilyp, why did Duncan walk away from me last night?”
“This has been a terrible shock for everyone. We had accepted that you were lost to us. Now that you are with us again, so suddenly, without any warning or explanation . . .” He made a helpless gesture. “It is a terrible shock.”
“You keep saying terrible.” As if my waking up had been a bad thing. “Being shot in the head is terrible. So is waking up and finding out you’ve lost five years of your life. The war between the League and the Hsktskt, that’s really terrible—”
“The war is over,” he said gently. “Teulon Jado negotiated peace between the League and the Hsktskt.”
“The Jado . . .” Pain lanced through my head, so sharp and sudden that it knocked the wind out of me. “Something happened to them. What?”
“Just after you took control of the Rilken ship, the League fleet attacked the CloudWalk, and massacred HouseClan Jado,” Squilyp said, stunning me. “You were the only witness. They knew if they allowed you to escape, you would trigger a war between the Jorenians and the League.”
“Why didn’t they just kill me?” Then I answered my own question before he could. “Shropana. He wanted revenge for the attack on Joren, when I sold him and his fleet out to the Hsktskt. Is that why he attacked the CloudWalk?”
“Some believe it influenced his decision.”
I remembered Akkabarr was a slaver world. “It’s also why he kept me alive. He was going to sell me into slavery.”
“Not all of the Jado were killed. Their ClanLeader, Teulon, also survived the massacre. Like you, he was abducted and taken to Akkabarr to be sold. He escaped to the surface and organized a rebellion. In time, he forced both the League and the Hsktskt to declare peace.” Squilyp hesitated before adding, “Jarn helped him.”
“Jarn.” The name made my head spin. “That’s what the nurses keep calling me.” What my husband had muttered in that awful voice before he’d left me here.
“From the day the League transport you were on crashed on Akkabarr until last night,” Squilyp said, “that is the person you have been.”
The Omorr took his time examining me, performing a full-body series of scans before drawing blood samples and testing my physical and mental responses. As he worked, he filled me in on some of the events I’d missed during my extended nap—none of which involved me personally, I noted.
“I can see you being chief medical adviser to the Jorenian Ruling Council,” I mentioned as he used a penlight to check my pupils, “but the father of twin boys?”
“My mate claims it was a deliberate attempt on my part to further subjugate her,” Squilyp murmured as he used a scope to look at my retinas. “No matter how often I explain that in our species twinning is caused by a female hormonal surge at the point of conception, she still holds me responsible.”
I thought of my daughter. I never liked being separated from my kid, but it would be another day before I saw her again. “Why did we leave Marel on Joren?”
“Many reasons,” he assured me. “All of which had to do with protecting her.”
I did some math. “She’d be almost nine years old now. Jesus.” I’d already missed too much of her life. As soon as we returned to Joren, I was never letting the kid out of my sight again.
He straightened. “Have you felt any weakness, sensory disruption, or pain since regaining consciousness?”
My heart felt like a lump of arutanium, but the only cure for that evidently didn’t want to see me. “That light is giving me a headache.”
Not counting the abyssal gap in my memory, I passed all of the Omorr’s scans and tests. After he checked the results, he handed them to me.
“You are slightly underweight, but that is normal for you,” Squilyp said as he transferred the last of the data from his scanner to my chart. “I would like to keep you under monitor for the next forty-eight hours, but I doubt your readings will change. Nor would the medical staff thank me for it.”
I barely heard him. Throughout the exam I had stayed quiet, simply watching the door panel and waiting for it to open, and Reever to hurry in to check on me. He hadn’t, and now I suspected he never would.
Why? What was wrong? What had I done?
“The ship looks different,” I said as I finished dressing. “Did they relocate our quarters?”
“I believe so.” He gave me a troubled look. “It might be wise to arrange separate accommodations for the moment.”
“So Reever will have some time to get over the terrible shock of me waking up.” Before he could lie to me again, I shook my head. “Never mind. He can tell me what the deal is between us when I find him.”
“First allow me to signal the captain.”
As it turned out, he didn’t have to; Xonea Torin was waiting for us in Medical. As soon as I stepped out of the assessment room, he strode over to me, seven and a half feet of large, blue, grim- faced, war-hardened Jorenian commander.
“Healer?”
“Captain.” I glanced up at the new purple streak in his black hair. “You’re starting to look like Pnor,” I said, referring to the former captain of the Sunlace. “Next thing you know, you’ll be tossing me into a detainment cell.”
“Cherijo.” He seized me, lifted me off my feet, and embraced me. “I knew the Mother would return you to us. I knew.”
The ferocity of his affection unnerved me, and I gave his shoulder an awkward pat. “It’s okay, big guy. Sorry it took so long.
He set me down but held on to my hands. All twelve of his fingers trembled as he looked over my head at the Senior Healer. “She has fully recovered? She will not leave us again?”
“I cannot be certain, Captain, but all of the tests I’ve run indicate that she is both stable and healthy.” Squilyp turned to me. “Cherijo, I need to have a word with the captain. Will you wait here for me?”
I nodded and, as soon as they disappeared into the Senior Healer’s office, I headed for the door panels.
“Healer Jarn,” someone called after me. “You agreed to wait.”
“I didn’t say how long, and my name isn’t Jarn.” Once I was out in the corridor, I went straight for the lift. A few of the Jorenian crewmen I passed tried to stop me to chat, but I made a quick, apologetic gesture of urgency and kept going.
Once inside the lift, I told the panel to take me to the observation deck.
