The Recovery Man's Bargain

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  “Then what has disfigured her face if not an injury?” asked yet another Gyonnese.

  “The injury disfigured it, and the technique I used to heal it hasn’t gotten to that part yet. Also, she was exposed to some contaminants around the time she boarded my ship, so she has some medication to prevent an illness from them.”

  “I thought humans could remove contaminants,” said the center Gyonnese. “Or is that a lie from the Aleyd corporation as well?”

  “It’s no lie,” Yu said, hating discussions with the Gyonnese. They were always circular, but somehow they never ended up where they started. It was as if the discussions did move forward, but in a way he didn’t quite understand. “I used the standard method to remove 95% of her contamination. The remaining part is slower, and requires the pills. Make sure she takes them if you want her to remain healthy.”

  “We do not understand human physiology,” the center Gyonnese said. “We cannot be responsible for her care.”

  “If you like,” Yu said, “I can download a medical program that will take care of things for you. I’d have to transfer it from my ship to the original computer in this science facility.”

  “Do so,” the first Gyonnese said.

  “However,” said the center Gyonnese, “do not expect payment for this program. We would not need it without your negligence.”

  “I could have kept her from you until she healed,” Yu said. “I thought you wanted her quickly.”

  “We do,” the first Gyonnese said.

  The center Gyonnese said to the first Gyonnese loudly enough for Yu to hear, “This human is cheating us. We can’t even quiz this person to see if she is indeed Rhonda Shindo.”

  Yu had forgotten that humans looked the same to the Gyonnese, just like Gyonnese looked the same to most humans.

  “She is,” he said. “She has identification chips in her hands.”

  “Which we cannot access,” the center Gyonnese said.

  Then Yu understood. They weren’t sure they could open the coffin. So he pressed the side and the lid slid back. The Gyonnese scuttled backwards, swaying as they moved.

  Yu grabbed her hand and hung it off the side of the coffin. “Check now.”

  The Gyonnese stared at her. Their arms flailed behind their backs, fingers touching, obviously communicating in a way he did not understand.

  Finally the first Gyonnese scuttled forward. With clear trepidation, he took her hand in his fingers and touched the nearest chip.

  He started, then his whiskers spread out wide, and then he dropped her hand as if it had burned him.

  “It is she,” he said to the others.

  A visible shudder ran through him. He excused himself and scuttled into the darkness. A liquid sound, like water filling a bowl, echoed from that spot.

  The other Gyonnese bent in the middle, their arms going up.

  “Is he all right?” Yu asked.

  The Gyonnese rose slowly, as if they were under water.

  Yu’s heart pounded. He was afraid he had violated some kind of protocol.

  Finally, the Gyonnese who hadn’t spoken said, “Touching her has made him ill. He will recover, but he will never forget the shame of it.”

  Yu wasn’t sure what his reaction should be. “I didn’t know. I could have found another way to verify.”

  “There is no other way,” said the same Gyonnese.

  Then the remaining four stared at him as if they expected something.

  “Look,” Yu said, “I can download the medical program from my ship. She’s going to wake up on her own in about four Earth hours. She’ll be ready to fight. As I said, make sure she’s restrained before that.”

  “You are certain she is not dead?” the center Gyonnese asked.

  “Positive,” Yu said, “and if you want, double check with the guy who touched her. Living humans are warm to the touch. She should have been warm. She still is, if someone else wants to verify.”

  They all scuttled backwards. He was glad they couldn’t see inside his visor because he smiled at their reaction.

  “She is warm.” The first Gyonnese came out of the darkness. His skin had turned an orange-yellow.

  “See?” Yu said. “All I need is my payment. Then I’ll send the download and leave you to do whatever you’re going to do.”

  “No,” the center Gyonnese said.

  Yu froze. He’d expected some argument, but not an outright no.

  “I delivered her,” Yu said. “You promised payment upon receipt. I trusted you. I didn’t even take a deposit, and this woman cost me. She murdered my partner. See why I’m warning you?”

  “We have no proof that your partner is dead,” the center Gyonnese said.

  “I can give you his body,” Yu snapped. “You want it? I don’t know what to do with it.”

  Four of them scuttled even farther back, but the center one stayed in position.

  “We shall pay half.”

  “Half?” Yu asked. He hadn’t expected this. The Gyonnese had always been fair until now.

  “She is damaged. We know nothing of your kind. She might live until you are far from here, and then she will die. We need her alive for court.”

  “She’s fine,” Yu said.

  “You have told us she’s ill.”

  “I also told you it was nothing major.” But had he? Bruised meant that she was fine to humans, but what did it mean to Gyonnese? And the contamination. He’d explained the 95% but not how severe the 5% was.

  “We have no external verification for that.”

  “You’ll have the medical program,” Yu said.

  “Which you will give us,” the center Gyonnese said. “We cannot trust it.”

  They had a point, but he wasn’t going to concede it. “I want full payment.”

  “You will get the second half when she appears in court,” the center Gyonnese said.

  “Pay me three-quarters,” Yu said. “I’ve lost my assistant.”

  “Half,” the center Gyonnese said.

  “I’ll take her away,” Yu said.

  “Half.” The center Gyonnese took his long arms and folded them across his body. He had clearly negotiated with humans before.

  Yu had already negotiated a full price higher than anything he’d ever received from the Gyonnese. Maybe they’d figured that out. Half would still be more than he’d ever made from them.

  “Half,” he said, “if you pay me the rest after she wakes.”

  “You are not staying,” the center Gyonnese said.

  “Nope,” Yu said. “I’m going to get my hand repaired. When it’s done, I’ll come back, and you give me the rest.”

  “When we take her to court.”

  “No,” Yu said. “If I don’t get the second payment in the next few Earth days, I’m taking her now. You get nothing.”

  He heard a shushering sound, and realized that was the other Gyonnese talking softly, without benefit of the amplification device.

  Finally the center Gyonnese said, “Half. The second payment will come within one Earth week.”

  That was about how long it would take him to find an adequate medical facility, to have the repair, and then to return.

  “Fine,” Yu said. “I want the first half now.”

  “Done,” the center Gyonnese said. “You owe us a medical program.”

  “You’ll get it as soon as I return to the ship.”

  “How do we take custody of the woman?” the center Gyonnese said.

  Yu pressed the side of the coffin. “Where do you want it?”

  “We want it to follow us,” the center Gyonnese said.

  “As soon as I verify payment, I’ll program that,” Yu said.

  Instantly his links hummed. They had been blocking most of the nearby network. He quickly scanned the account he’d given them when they made the deal, and then he tapped part of the coffin.

  “She’s all yours,” he said. “Good luck with her. You’ll need it.”

  ***

&nb
sp; And finally, Yu was free. He hurried back to his ship, closing all the doors behind him and setting double locking protocols. He used an emergency voice command to power up the systems before he got to the bridge, and he didn’t even remove his environmental suit as he moved through the ship.

  He stopped at decon and went into the machine himself. He left the environmental suit in a secondary decon unit.

  Neither units recorded any problems, but he still felt dirty.

  He knew that was because of the job.

  The job, the injuries, the loss of Nafti. All the mistakes Yu had made. He almost regretted leaving the woman behind. She would find no sympathy from the Gyonnese. But they wouldn’t kill her.

  No matter how much she deserved it.

  He got to the bridge and sank into the pilot’s chair. He had to be careful as he took off because he had no help. If he was going to make more mistakes this was where he would do it.

  The ship rose quickly and the lights on the pad went out. He didn’t breathe deeply, though, until he was outside Io’s orbit and on his way out of the solar system.

  Shindo was with the Gyonnese. And if he didn’t register his flight plan with anyone, no one would come after him for a while.

  He had his onboard computer search for a base outside this sector that specialized in human hand repair.

  It took a while for the ship to locate one, but when it did, it gave him the information. He programmed it into the navigational system.

  Then he set the ship on autopilot and went into his cabin for a long, much deserved rest.

  ***

  The ship woke him in some weird asteroid belt that didn’t show up on any of the charts. The ship didn’t believe the autopilot was enough to avoid collision.

  He felt that it was, but stirred himself anyway. He had some other business that had to be completed here.

  He went onto the bridge and called up the readings for the belt. The asteroids were closer together than in any other belt he’d traveled through. No wonder the ship wanted extra guidance.

  He waited until they found a fairly large gap between the rocks and ordered a full stop. Then he ran a hand over his face. He was still tired. Deep down exhausted, in fact, and sick of himself. He knew this would only make him feel worse.

  He could have had the bots do it.

  But he was having enough trouble living with himself these last few days. Shrugging this job off on the bots would only make him feel worse.

  He went to medical lab and stared at Nafti. Nafti’s skin had gone a horrible whitish color that showed the veins in his face and hands. His eyes, which no one had bothered to close (which Yu hadn’t bothered to close), had clouded over.

  Nafti didn’t look human any more.

  But that didn’t excuse what happened or the way Yu had treated him. Yu had never given Nafti any respect, even though he had hired Nafti for his strength and experience.

  Yu could use that strength now. The trek to the smallest cargo bay would be a difficult one.

  Yu ran a hand over his hair. He didn’t even know what to say over Nafti’s body or if he should say anything. He didn’t even know if Nafti left a family behind. He had no idea if there was someone to contact about Nafti’s death. He’d never had Nafti fill out any forms.

  Yu wasn’t even sure if Janus Nafti was the man’s real name.

  Yu sighed. Then he hit buttons on the side of the diagnostic table, unhooking it from the floor and giving it wheels instead of feet. He tucked Nafti’s arms on his torso and grimaced. The corpse was ice-cold. At least it wasn’t in rigor any longer. Yu would have hated having those arms hanging over the side, bumping into corners as he wheeled the table out of the medical lab.

  It took longer than he expected to get to the cargo level. He had to go around some tight corners, and once the wheels got stuck. Yu struggled, but eventually freed them.

  He didn’t want to remove Nafti sooner than he had to.

  Using his good hand on the back of the cart, Yu pushed the body into the smallest cargo bay. This bay was empty of everything. Yu rarely used it, except to jettison cargo that he didn’t want. And since he didn’t want valuable items disappearing into space, he just made sure nothing stayed in that bay at all.

  He pushed the diagnostic table into the bay. It was cold, with unpainted metallic walls and a matching floor. Not much to look at, and certainly not enough to pass as a ceremonial transition spot from one life to the next—if, indeed, Nafti had believed in the kind of thing.

  Nafti would go out into space unprotected, which seemed wrong, given how much Nafti wanted to protect that huge body of his.

  Yu pushed the table to the exterior door. Then he looked at the man he’d worked with for years and hadn’t really known.

  “I’m sorry,” Yu said again, and used his one good hand to shove Nafti off the table.

  The body landed so hard that the table bounced. Yu winced. He didn’t look down. He didn’t want to see if he had done any more damage.

  Instead, he grabbed the edge of the table and pulled it behind him as he scurried out of the cargo bay.

  Then he sealed the interior door and opened the exterior door to space.

  He closed his eyes and counted to two hundred. Then he closed the exterior door.

  With luck, Nafti would float out here with the asteroids, and no one would ever find him. He would show up as another bit of space debris on other ships’ sensors.

  Space debris.

  Yu shook his head and opened his eyes. Then he stood on tiptoe and peered through the window into the bay.

  No body lay on the floor.

  Nafti was gone as if he had never been.

  ***

  The medical base Yu’s sensors had found doubled as a space port. The base had been built by one of the corporations as it expanded throughout the known universe, but that corporation had long ago sold it to a medical company that specialized in delicate procedures.

  People came from all over to receive new limbs or to get high-end augmentations. The enhancements that were standard on places like Earth were discouraged here. If someone wanted a prettier face, they could go to some medical base in Earth’s solar system.

  If they wanted to upgrade their hand or augment their sense of smell to equal that of a dog’s, they came here. This base improved on the human condition; it didn’t repair the human condition.

  Normally, Yu would have gone somewhere that specialized in repair. He didn’t need a high-end hand. But this was the most reputable medical base the farthest from Earth, and it would be hard to track him here.

  In fact, the base’s information stressed privacy. No one would ever know if a piano player improved his dexterity or a chef upgraded his sense of taste.

  Or if a Recovery Man who—by this point—was probably running from authorities got a new and better hand, replacing the one he’d damaged delivering a kidnapped woman to the Gyonnese.

  The medical facilities were stunning—a luxury in and of themselves. He felt like he was going into a spa instead of an examination room. Everything was calibrated to his tastes—the spicy scented air, the goldish-brown lighting, the subtle reds and oranges on the walls. The medical personnel spoke in hushed tones, probably because someone had noted the Gyonnese influence on his ship, and they treated the wounds as if they were fresh instead of days old.

  After intensive examinations and a lot of consultations, the surgeons here told him that the medical avatar had been right; his hand could not be saved. He would receive an artificial hand which was, as Shindo had so snidely observed, much better than his own.

  He received medication, instructions, and a helper who would see him through the latter stages of the procedure. At the moment, all he had to do was choose the make and model of the hand he wanted. He was stunned to realize he could afford several hundred of the high-end models, not because they were cheap, but because the Gyonnese had paid the first half of the last quoted price—the one that he had inflated beyond measure
. He figured they would pay half of the first quoted price, and cheat him of the rest.

  They were being fairer than he expected.

  So he ordered the most expensive hand. It looked like all the others to him, but it had features that the others didn’t have, from various external chips that worked with his links to internal mechanisms that allowed him to set the hand’s strength depending on the task before him. He could push a finger-sized hole in the hull of his ship if he wanted to or touch a goblet without shattering the crystal.

  They offered to replace both hands so that his strengths would balance. He knew that a lot of clients did such things, but he wasn’t going to replace body parts unless he needed it.

  Part of him was appalled he had to replace this one.

  The doctors had him start the procedure immediately. They were afraid of infection in the damaged hand. So they unceremoniously cut it off.

  He felt no pain—the initial injury had been a lot more painful than the loss of the hand—but it shocked him to look at the stump. They had sealed the skin but they wanted him in the most sterile parts of the medical wing.

  The risk of infection was too great to have him go to the recreation area or back to his ship.

  So he had to find a way to pass the time.

  Drinking was out. He didn’t want to view the entertainment holos and the live entertainments in the medical unit didn’t interest him. His external links had been disconnected—too many false emergency calls from links happened during surgery—and he had shut off many of the other links.

  He didn’t want to be traceable.

  But before he went completely off the grid, he had to check his messages. He wanted that final payment from the Gyonnese.

  The message center of the medical wing looked oddly alien. Each message unit had its own privacy booth that rose around the equipment like a pointed egg. The booths were opaque, but transparent enough so that medical personnel could see if the person inside was in some sort of distress.