H. M. Hoover

by The Rains of Eridan

  "If you don’t value it, it’s an obsession.” Evelyn lost her sarcasm in curiosity. "What dreams have you given up? You never told me about them.”

  "Nor will I,” said Theo. "At least not while we have this much work. Now, do you want me to do blood samples from the staff today, or correlate the stats on the weekly samples?”

  "Felix is getting today’s batch. You do the correlation.”

  For the next few days Theo spent almost all her waking time in the medical lab. When she wasn’t there she was in her biology lab. She was up before Karen woke and often didn’t return until the girl was asleep. She had habitually worked that way, totally absorbed. Content.

  She had learned already that those who were immune to the effect of the crystal virus all carried another alien virus in their systems, a virus shared with vots. The vot virus not only was harmless to humans but rendered the crystal virus harmless. With that information the medical staff was working in two directions; a vaccine direct from the crystal virus and an antiviral agent corresponding to the vots’ interference phenomenon. Theo favored the vot route, Evelyn the vaccine route. Both were aware of little else.

  Then one afternoon Theo looked out the lab window and saw Karen and Philip walking down toward the beach. The rain had stopped; it was beginning to do that now. Sometimes it quit raining for as long as two hours at a stretch. Karen was wearing Theo’s favorite beige sweat shirt, and the girl was telling the man something with her usual great enthusiasm, and he was laughing. How nice it was to see enthusiasm for life instead of the restraint or ennui of adults, Theo thought. How good to laugh at. ..

  "Why the wistful look?” Evelyn’s voice broke into her thoughts. "You are going to miss that child when this is over. In a way, it might be good for you, Theo Leslie, make you more human. You never have been vulnerable where people are concerned. Just animals. But as for Karen . . . you see her missing you now, wearing that big ugly sweat shirt of yours for security. That child—”

  "Shut up, Evelyn,” said Theo and hurried out of the lab. Damn Evelyn and her constant analyses, she thought as she walked down the hall. Damn the Corporation and their rules. Damn the fools who killed Karen’s parents—and damn Evelyn again because she’s right! Theo broke into a run to escape to her own room and the luxury of tears.

  A half hour alone and she had recovered enough composure to blow her nose, wash her face, brush her hair, and set to work to solve the problem. In the Commander’s office was a large volume of corporate law which supposedly covered any legal situation that could possibly arise. It was very definite on the status of juveniles on expedition; none was allowed unless accompanied by one natural parent.

  "Orphaned juveniles will be returned to the source of maternal origin, there to become wards of the nearest living relative if said juvenile and relative so mutually desire, or in lieu of this, become a ward of the Corporation and placed in an environment suitable to the ward’s intellect and education until said juvenile attains majority.” Theo read it, snapped the book shut, put it back on the shelf, and went off to find Jonathan Tairas.

  He was in the dome core reloading the automated food service equipment. "Who has this passion for turkey?” he asked when he saw her come in. "Twenty-two cases of turkey dinners!” He shuddered.

  "How can I adopt Karen ?”

  He looked up from his work and was going to make a joke, then saw she was in no mood for it. "I’m not at all sure you can,” he said. "The Book says—”

  "I just read it.”

  "Have you discussed it with Karen?”

  "No.”

  He put another stack of trays into the server and aligned them carefully. Too carefully. "You’re the third person to express interest in adoption. Karen talked to me about it yesterday. She said she wanted to stay with you. If you wanted her. As you quite obviously do, pale face.”

  "Why didn’t you tell me?”

  "Karen asked me not to. She said she knew it was—and I quote —'a great responsibility to know someone loves you and if the person being loved doesn’t want to be, very awkward’—unquote. So if you never thought of it yourself, she didn’t want you to feel awkward.”

  "Who else wants to adopt her?”

  He gave a wry grin. "Me. Now I feel awkward.” And he turned back to the machine to hide his feelings.

  "How very dear you can be beneath that reserve of yours,” she said impulsively.

  "Strange that you should say that, Doctor ... are you sure you want her, Theo? You’ve always been a loner. Like me. You’re always eager to go off to some godforsaken world like this to study strange beasts. If you could keep her with you, have you thought what it means? The day-to-day living? Now it’s fun, because she is precocious and charming—and you met dramatically—you felt sorry for her. But you also know there will be a definite ending to her being with you. If she were your child, she would be with you constantly for at least seven more years. You would be responsible for her through these troublesome years of adolescence—for her education, for her safety, for her happiness. There are so few people out here who are her age. She will rely on you for everything. Friend, mother—suppose you fall in love and she is jealous. Suppose—”

  "Jonathan.” She called him to a halt. "You’ve thought of all this and you still want to adopt her. Don’t anticipate. You have worked with me on five expeditions. You know me as well as you know any of your staff. You’ve known Karen through most of her life. You knew her parents. Do you think we will—” She paused and took a deep breath. "I love that child very much. The question is, can I keep her?”

  XXIV

  WITH a promise of total support from Tairas, Theo set off to talk to Karen. The girl wasn’t in any of the domes. Finally she found Philip, who said he had left her by the ocean. "She said she wanted to do some serious thinking. But that was an hour ago or more.”

  Theo found her there, hidden by the cliff, on a rock, sitting with her hands clasped around her knees, watching waves the color of weak coffee come smashing in to shore.

  With Karen unaware of another human presence, Theo stopped to study her as she would have an unsuspecting animal. In repose Karen’s face was no longer childlike, merely young. There was something around the eyes and the taut jawline, a self-contained thing that looked out and analyzed and kept its own private counsel. A gust of wind feathered her hair across her face and she shook it back, then leaned forward and rested her head against her knees, as if suddenly overwhelmed by fatigue—or by being trapped forever in her own skin.

  It was a movement so curiously private that Theo felt shame at witnessing it. Not wanting Karen to know she had been spying, she almost ran back up the cliff and walked north until another path led down to the beach. From there Karen could see her coming and present the self she wished to show.

  Theo stopped to pick up a curious seashell, spiraled, like a hexagonal orange pagoda with a round hole in its base. She washed the wet sand off it in an incoming wave. When she looked up, Karen was running down the beach to join her.

  "How come Evelyn let you out?” she called. "Are you done?”

  "I escaped.” Theo handed her the shell. "Have a present.”

  Karen’s face lit up as she took it. "It’s beautiful.” She looked it over thoroughly and fingered the points polished bright by the sand. "I wish we could stay on this world and never had to go someplace else. I wish ...” She looked up to see Theo’s reaction to that wish.

  "It is a beautiful world,” agreed Theo, wondering how to start the conversation she had come for and suddenly shy. "I talked to Jonathan Tairas today, Karen. I asked him ... if I could adopt you.”

  She took three more steps before realizing Karen had stopped. As she turned to see why, the girl engulfed her in a bear hug so vigorous it nearly toppled them both into the sand. "I don't know if I can," Theo cautioned when she could breathe again. "Don’t get your hopes up too much. We’ll . .

  "I know! I read the Book! I’m so glad you want me! Evelyn said you were
used to . . . well, not having anyone to worry about, and you liked animals four hundred per cent more than people, and I thought maybe you were just being kind to me, and ...”

  "Evelyn told you that ?”

  "No. Not me. She talks too much but she’s not cruel. I was curled up in the chair in the lobby and she didn’t see me. She was walking by, talking to someone else. She didn’t know I heard.”

  "O.K.,” Theo said carefully. "People love to gossip. Especially in a closed society like ours. You may overhear other things that upset you. There are several important things I want you to hear from me. Just in case you don’t know already.” She took a deep breath. "I think you are a very special person, Karen Orlov. You are bright and dear and so brave sometimes you nearly break my heart. Whatever the legal ruling is, I want you to know—I love you very much.”

  Karen’s eyes never left hers as Theo spoke. Theo watched her attempt to smile and then saw her chin start to quiver and her eyes well up with tears. She reached out and pulled the girl close into her arms for comfort as she cried.

  Karen tried to say something between sobs. Theo couldn’t understand a word of it. She was about to murmur placations and then stopped, remembering "there—there—dears” murmured to herself once long ago. "For all I know,” Theo thought, "the first sob was relief and all the rest old grief remembered and now being accepted.” Out of respect for Karen she would not presume to murmur. She lay her cheek against the girl’s damp hair and remained silent.

  Gradually the sobs diminished, the grip relaxed a little, and she felt Karen’s body grow less tense. She freed one arm, reached into her pocket for tissues, and used one to wipe her own tears. As she did so, she wondered at herself. For someone for whom years passed without crying, she was certainly doing a lot of it.

  She could hear Evelyn explaining it to her and damned the woman again silently.

  "I got your jacket all wet.” Karen took the rest of the tissues and blew her nose vigorously.

  "That’s O.K. I got your head a little damper. We’re even.” They grinned at each other rather self-consciously.

  "Theo?”

  "Yes?”

  "What I said was, I love you too. Oh.” Karen reached up with a tissue. "Your eyes are still leaking.” She carefully patted the corners of Theo’s eyes. "I think we should walk up the beach awhile, Dr. Leslie. You appear to be having a crying jag.”

  Theo nodded. "I think you are right, Dr. Orlov. And then we will go get us a good stiff hot chocolate.”

  Hand in hand, they set off over the wet sand.

  It did not rain any more that day. That night no one slept well. It was too quiet. You could hear every noise. And what if that sound out there wasn’t the wind but the Animal? Was that the ocean’s roar or was it the big aircraft from Base One? And that noise . . . ?

  XXV

  Theo lay wide-eyed in bed, not afraid, just not relaxed. She heard the guards each time they passed her window. There were muffled voices, footpads in the hall. From Karen’s alcove came the slow, deep breathing of sleep.

  "If I get up, will I wake her? Or if she wakens after I’m gone, will she be frightened?” she thought, then smiled at her own worrying and slipped out of bed. But stealthily. In the lit bathroom she wrote a note, "Went to lab. Back soon. Go to sleep,” laid it on her pillow, and slipped out into the night-lit hall.

  Maybe ten people were in the rec room when she passed, some watching a movie, others lulled to sleep by the noise of the sound track. Felix was doing his laundry in the sonic cleaner. He waved a pair of socks at her as she passed. Tairas’s door was open. She glanced in and saw him stretched out across his bed, fully dressed, snoring in exhaustion. She paused to close his privacy screen.

  Someone had left all the lights on in the medical lab. She reached out and shut them off.

  "Hey! Who did that?” Evelyn called from a corner.

  "Me.”

  "Why aren’t you in bed?”

  "Why aren’t you?”

  "Because ... If you really want to know, I came down to run a blood test. I feel abnormally confident tonight, and I wanted to see if it was physical or mental.”

  Theo smiled. "Don’t trust yourself when you feel normal these days, huh?”

  "No,” Evelyn said bluntly. "Neither would you if . . . but I’m glad you don’t know what this fear is like, Theo. It’s terrible. There’s been nothing that doesn’t frighten me. I’ve been afraid in my bathroom—the closed screen gives me acute claustrophobia. I’m afraid of anything sharp. Darkness. Swimming. Flying. Too many people in a room. I’m afraid I’m going to die.” She paused. "In a way it’s been very educational. I never knew before what some patients suffered. Of course there’s no antibody for it, normally. ...”

  “Are you telling me you have one ?” said Theo.

  “Not an antibody. An interferon. None of ours worked. I—uh —extracted the interferon from your blood. And injected myself.”

  “What is an interferon?”

  “Exactly what the name suggests. A chemical substance that interferes with and prevents harmful virus from attacking cells.” “You played guinea pig?”

  “I had nothing to lose, Theo. I was so scared I had to fight the thought of suicide. I didn’t want to waste time with rats. And the vaccine will take weeks—” The green light came on in the keyboard. She reached up to touch it, then hesitated, “If it shows my virus count isn’t down, will I get scared again, Theo?”

  “Aren’t you sure it’s the virus that causes the fear?”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of now,” said Evelyn and made herself laugh. “That it isn’t a viral infection. What if we’re afraid because we know too much, because we’ve traveled too far, because there’s no place that’s home and it is beginning to occur to all of us that we are mortal and of no more importance than a meteor? There is no cure for that—”

  “You mean we’re all human?” Theo said and simultaneously reached over and touched the green button.

  She saw Evelyn recoil like a dog that has been kicked, and her first instinct was to comfort her as she would have Karen. But common sense warned her that sympathy would be no favor; it would merely weaken the woman’s already threatened reserve of strength. She let her hand come to rest casually on Evelyn’s right shoulder. “Let’s look at your blood test first. We can fuss later.” "I don’t think I can look.”

  "Yes, you can,” Theo assured her. "Every symptom is not psychosomatic, Evelyn. Something about this virus is affecting human neurotransmitters. It is scrambling the message from one nerve to the next. Just because you can’t isolate which chemicals are involved, or how it works, does not mean it’s not happening. You know that. We need expertise and five years of study. In the meantime, let’s look and see if the vot virus will control it.” Two test slides were viewed side by side; one was peppered with tiny dark spots; the other showed less than half as many.

  "It’s working!” she heard Evelyn whisper. "See the fluorescent spots?” Evelyn touched more buttons and the picture on the left changed. "I took the test interferon thirty-six hours ago. That’s my blood sample taken three hours later . .

  "Did anyone ever tell you you have lovely type-B negative?” "Oh, yes. I was the family beauty, you know. See, at eighteen

  hours it’s beginning to be noticeable.” Evelyn turned and grasped

  Theo’s wrist. "Can you spare a pint?”

  "Sure. But now? It’s two a.m.”

  "You can sleep while you’re doing it.”

  Theo shrugged. "Why not? You can have more if you like.” "No. That’s all I need. Now. Was Felix still up when you came in? I’m going to need some help.”

  "I can help you.”

  "No. You’re going to bed when I’m done with you.”

  "But I was going to work on my cave bear tissues.”

  "Not tonight.” Totally her confident self again, Evelyn rose from the terminal and led Theo to the nearest work table. "Up,” she ordered. "I can plug you in here.” She ru
mmaged through a drawer in the table. "Where are those blood-pacs? Good!”

  With expert hands, she inserted the needle painlessly into Theo’s arm and watched the tube begin to fill. "Good. Good.” Theo thought of Karen’s vampires and giggled.

  Half an hour later she had had her sugary drink as a reward and was sent off to bed. Evelyn and Felix were busy at the centrifuge and hardly aware when Theo went. As she stepped out into the hall, she saw the light switch, and thought to herself that next time she saw lab lights on, she would mind her own business.

  The note was still on her pillow, but a line had been added. It said, "O.K., but I don’t like it.” She glanced over at the alcove. Karen was again sound asleep.

  Once in her own bed with the covers pulled up, she started to think about Evelyn’s success, how happy it would make the crew. A light rain was beginning to fall. It was the last sound she heard for eight hours.

  XXVI

  SHE WOKE TO THE CLICK OF A TRAY BEING PLACED ON THE DESK. THERE WAS A BOUNCE AS SOMEONE SAT ON THE END OF HER BED. A FAMILIAR HAND CLASPED HER LEFT FOOT.

  "Hmm?”

  "Dr. Wexler said to wake you before you got a headache from too much sleep. Besides, you’ve already missed the sun.”

  "It was out?” Theo opened one eye and gave her a groggy smile. "Good morning.”

  "Good morning.” Karen tilted her head to check more closely. "Are you really awake, Theo, or are you being pleasant and

  hoping I’ll go away again for an hour? Because if you’re awake I’ll tell you what’s happening, but if you’re not I won’t.”

  Theo closed her eye and thought that over. "I think I’m awake,” she decided. "Can I listen with my eyes shut?”

  "O.K. You have a pillow wrinkle line over your nose and down your cheek.”

  "Does it add distinction to my character?”

  "No. It just looks like somebody folded you wrong.”

  Theo laughed and sat up. "You win, I’m awake.”