by S MacDonald
‘Marital?’ Simon gave a snort of indignation. ‘We never even got to the wedding! She dumped me three hours before it – and hit me with the bouquet!’
Alex did not even attempt to be sympathetic. Simon’s chaotic love life was as entertaining as it was fascinating, and Simon himself was never really upset at being dumped or divorced. He was just, as now, indignant and bewildered.
‘I just don’t understand,’ Simon declared, as Alex gave way to chuckles at the mental image of an infuriated bride walloping Simon with a bouquet, ‘why they get so angry – and why so many of them assault me. It’s not like I’ve deceived them at all, ever.’ He gave a plaintive sigh. ‘Ah well,’ he dismissed his latest romantic catastrophe with a shrug. ‘One day,’ he said, with unshakeable optimism, ‘I will find the right woman.’
Alex shook his head.
‘You might have more success,’ he suggested, not for the first time, ‘if you made some effort to being the right man.’
Simon looked perplexed. ‘I am,’ he told the captain, ‘who I am.’ He slapped a hand to his chest to make that clear. ‘If they don’t like who I am and what I’m offering, openly and honestly, why do they agree to marry me?’ He shook his head too, his genius intellect entirely at a loss when faced with this conundrum. ‘But,’ he went on at once, with a firm change of subject, ‘I didn’t come here to chat about my love life. I’m worried, Alex.’ He indicated, in turn, the screens showing data from Carrearranis, so Alex would know that this was a mission concern, and his manner became more direct, too, the forceful way he spoke when on a mission of his own. ‘It’s the issue of medical emergencies. Bad enough when we were out at Border Station and had to cope with news of death and injury we could do nothing about. Now we’re right here and it’s happening right in front of us. And make no mistake, Alex, there will be medical emergencies and given the population and how they live, that will be sooner rather than later. Stroke, heart attack, life threatening injuries, childbirth complications, they will happen, and could happen any moment.’
Alex nodded, with no attempt to hide his own troubled feelings over that. It was an issue they had already faced from right back at the start of the mission, already something thoroughly talked out from all angles and standing-order decisions made. Simon, though, gave him no opportunity to point that out.
‘I still think,’ he said, ‘that you are being far too cautious, with your mimsy little baby steps – we’ve had the capacity to land a sterile team right from the start and you know that. The three things preventing it were the Guardian, government policy on pristine environments, and permission from the Carrearranians. Well, the Guardian is gone, we now have abundant evidence that the environment is not pristine and the Carrearranians will undoubtedly, no doubt, give us permission to land.’
Alex couldn’t deny that the opinions being recorded by liaison teams certainly indicated that the Carrearranians were expecting them to come to the surface as soon as their incomprehensible counting and measuring had been completed.
Alex, though, did not want to rush things, for very sound reasons. Every step they took had to be supported by evidence which would satisfy the authorities, if not the public, that they were proceeding with due caution. And Alex himself felt that to rush the Carrearranians into this decision while they were still dealing with the loss of the Guardian would be unethical, an abuse of their trust. Simon was right about one thing, though – the discovery that Carrearranis was already contaminated with viral pathogens changed the rules about how the Fourth could progress things. Teams were already discussing the deployment of air-scoop drones for the collection of atmospheric samples. This in turn would be followed by landing drones which would collect physical samples, including DNA from Carrearranian volunteers, and return them to the ship. Only after physical confirmation of the results of remote scanning and the preparation of a thorough, detailed cross-infection plan would they be ready to send a team groundside for the historic first contact meeting in person. After that, with the Carrearranians’ consent, they could begin to land freely for research and diplomacy and to provide medical and rescue services. There were already plans for that, awaiting Carrearranian consent.
‘I know,’ said Simon, again not giving Alex any opportunity to explain the wider considerations, ‘Respect for sovereignty is an overriding concern, there are ethical issues in not ramming things on them they haven’t had time to understand and decide. But at the same time there are far more fundamental ethical issues involved in sitting here watching people die right in front of us. I know, I know…’ he waved a hand impatiently as if Alex had been about to argue with him. ‘Spacers are prepared to do that - Blowout Law, I get that. And Fleet people are trained to shut that airlock if they have to, trained and evaluated to make sure that they will.’
Alex gave another slight nod. Hard as it was, it was something all spacers had to accept as reality that if saving the ship meant closing the airlock and leaving people to die in explosive decompression that was what you had to do. The alternative was no kind of heroism, as Fleet people were trained to understand. Forcing an airlock open when the survival of yourself and others depended on it being closed was nothing less than murder-suicide, murdering the others who would die as well as killing yourself. Simon was right, too, that Fleet personnel did not make it into shipboard service unless evaluations showed that they would make this and other hard choices according to their training. Command school was even more exacting, and those who weren’t prepared to make the life or death decisions didn’t make it through. It was a decision Alex had already made, here, and knew he would have to live with the consequences.
‘But this,’ Simon told him, ‘is not Blowout Law – people will die right in front of us because of politics, because you’re so concerned about not being imperialistic that you’re tiptoeing on eggshells. But me, you know, I’m a medic, we swear a different oath and we have only one ethic in this – if people are sick or injured, we treat them, regardless of who they are or any other consideration. And if you think I’m going to stand by quietly and watch people dying, you don’t know me at all.’ He looked sternly at Alex, but Alex didn’t try to speak. He knew from experience that the only thing to do in these situations was to let Simon have his say, and to listen, too, to whatever solution he was proposing. ‘I know that landing medical teams is too much of a jump for you, but I want a snatch pod.’ He put files on the screens in front of Alex as he spoke. The skipper was not surprised to see that they contained detailed project proposals complete with fully worked up schematics and operating policies. Simon already knew what paperwork Alex would ask for. ‘A converted shuttle…’ Simon drew up a schematic and Alex saw that the conversion was based on one of their smaller shuttles. It involved removing seats and installing a sealed unit which could be accessed only through the starboard airlock. The unit was a bunk-sized stasis pod, though with a further inner core like a bubble of thin, opaque plastic. ‘This stops people accessing or even seeing any controls,’ Simon pointed out. ‘The shuttle is maintained in full decontam and ready for launch. It’s remote piloted to land as close as possible to the casualty. People on the ground will have to put them inside but we’ll already be on first-response call so we can guide them through that. If need be, we’ll activate stasis, otherwise just sedate them and bring them up fast. Once here, we’ll operate under maximum quarantine, of course, and patients will be kept unconscious throughout to protect them from the trauma of coping with an alien environment. The same vehicle will return people once they’ve been treated. I have,’ he pulled that file up to, ‘prepared a holo to show people what is involved so they can make the informed choice you need as your mandate. But let’s not,’ he dictated, ‘faff around with individual polling. We can see now, we don’t have to worry about what might be going on off camera range and there are a hundred easy ways to gather opinion. Hands up if you’re happy with it…’ he shot his own hand into the air, ‘just for one.’ He brought down his hand an
d looked challengingly at the captain. ‘So…?’
Alex considered, and seeing that he was really studying the files he’d presented, Simon was quiet, leaving him to it.
The skipper checked through methodically, ensuring that the plan addressed all the concerns he knew would be raised, not here but far away by the Senate and the media. Then he watched the holo that Simon had prepared. It was four minutes long, beginning with an introduction by Simon himself explaining that the people they were going to see were not real, just simulations to show them the idea of the snatch pod. It showed, then, four case studies – an old man collapsing with a heart attack, a woman fighting for her life in breach childbirth, a man who’d cut an artery in a log-cutting accident and a child who’d fallen from a tree and fractured his skull. In each case, the snatch pod descended, the starboard airlock opened to reveal the smooth white bubble and the casualty was placed inside. The holo then showed the shuttle being brought to the ship, the quarantine facilities and the patient being treated in sickbay, while a voiceover explained what was happening.
‘We cannot promise that we will always be able to help…’ There was a shot of the shuttle coming down slowly, with the airlock opening to show a body wrapped in the way that the islanders shrouded their dead. ‘But we can promise,’ over footage of the recovered patients returning to their homes, ‘that we will do no harm, either to the people we bring up for treatment or to your world.’
‘Hmmn.’ Alex looked up from this and regarded Simon thoughtfully. ‘Not the holo,’ he said. ‘It’s far too data-rich, and far too reliant on visuals. We don’t, you know, spend hours talking things through with them for fun. Information holos don’t work. Carrearranians don’t have any pictorial art, they don’t image their world creatively and they have a very low visual learning quotient, too. They are very much an oral people, with a very strong aural learning quotient. They’re interested in still pictures of people and places, but they would very much rather be told about them, and they understand and retain far more data from verbal information than pictorial.’
Simon looked disconcerted. ‘Are you sure?’ he queried. ‘That’s very unusual, you know.’
‘Yes, we’re sure.’ Alex called up the wealth of research that confirmed it and tagged it to Simon for him to study later, but drew his attention particularly to a simple psychometric test. It was one of many that they’d been asking the Carrearranians to help them with, and had striking results. It was a classic reasoning test involving moving two lines to turn one shape into another. When presented with the puzzle as a visual problem using sticks, only 27% of Carrearranians had been able to solve it in under a minute. When presented with the same problem described to them verbally, with no visual aids, 63% had solved it straight away.
‘We don’t,’ said Alex, ‘use visuals.’
‘Oh.’ Simon conceded the point with good grace. ‘I missed that one,’ he admitted. ‘All right – I’ll change the holo to stills and load it to oral information. But I want it out on global broadcast, asap, for the fastest decision possible. This is urgent, Alex, an emergency could happen anytime and I do not want to be yelling and crying at you because a bureaucratic holdup means we aren’t ready. Will you give permission, at least, to get started on the conversion work?’
Alex looked at him steadily. ‘On the understanding,’ he said, ‘that it will not launch without my permission, and that you yelling and crying at me will not be any factor in that decision, Simon, all right?’
‘All right,’ Simon agreed, and was already getting up from the table. ‘I’ll get the revised broadcast to you straight away.’ He pointed a finger at the captain. ‘Tonight, Alex, please. If you need to hold one of your meetings about it then get people out of bed, I’ll waive workload limits for this. But this is, I think, one of those command decision things, isn’t it?’
Alex smiled slightly. ‘I can always make decisions without consultation, as and when I consider that necessary,’ he said. ‘It’s just good practice to ensure that all my officers are fully informed and to give opportunity for any concerns to be raised. In this instance, the snatch pod can’t be got ready much before lunchtime tomorrow and I don’t believe we should be offering this help much before we’re in a position to actually provide it. We can, as you so rightly say, go for very much quicker methods of establishing majority opinion now we have direct observation. 0925, our time, will give us maximum daytime population.’
Simon nodded to show his understanding of that. The population of Carrearranis was unevenly distributed, so that at times almost two thirds of them were on the sunlit hemisphere. The planet rotated in 18.36 shipboard hours, meaning that they were always out of synch. A proposal had been made that they moved to Carrearranian time to simplify things, but Buzz had vetoed it. They were already in some danger of being carried away by their fascination and excitement about all things Carrearranian, and it was important they retained a clear sense of their own identity.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘So long as we have permission before the pod is ready, I’m happy with that.’
They had their permission. Nobody raised any concerns when Alex explained Simon’s proposal at the morning briefing. On the contrary, there were smiles and sighs of relief all round. All of them had been braced to do their duty even if that meant leaving people to die, but it was a huge reprieve to know that they wouldn’t have to.
‘But – why didn’t we think of that?’ Martine wondered. The possibility of using fighters for emergency response had been discussed at length, but nobody had thought of using an unmanned shuttle fitted with a stasis pod. Like many of Simon’s suggestions, it seemed such an obvious solution once he’d made it that people felt stupid for not having thought of it themselves.
‘He is a genius,’ Alex said drily, which got a laugh as that was something Simon was rather too inclined to point out to people, himself.
‘Well, I didn’t think of it either,’ Davie said, making the point that he was even more intelligent than Simon, and that raised a chuckle, too. The decision was made, though, and Alex got straight onto it, calling Arak as soon as it was morning, his time. Arak had no global authority, of course, but he functioned as a de facto ambassador for his people. Alex always ran things by him first. He did so then, explaining that they wanted to make a global broadcast about an idea for helping people who were sick or injured. Arak was interested.
‘Have you finished counting things, then?’ he asked, referring to the Carrearranian belief that the Fourth would not come to visit them until they’d counted every raindrop and grain of sand and made sure they were safe.
‘Well, not yet,’ Alex admitted. ‘But we have scanned enough to be sure that we can do this with absolute safety for you and for us. Do you think it is something that your people will be willing to consider?’
Arak didn’t hesitate. ‘If you can help people,’ he said, ‘we’re not going to say no.’
They said yes, indeed, in overwhelming numbers – so much so that they had a global majority even before two thirds of the population had been polled. They had to wait for the other third, currently on the night side of the planet. There was no point in calling villages at night. Though a loud whistle broadcast through the singing stone could rouse a few people to come and see what the matter was, most people would just mutter and grumble and go back to sleep. Polls would continue to be taken as each island came around into the sun, but Alex was satisfied by lunchtime that he had the necessary mandate. The snatch pod was ready by then, too, with some minor adjustments made at Rangi’s request.
‘Excellent work, everyone,’ said Alex, signing off on a new standing order that the pod could be deployed on declaration of a medical emergency. ‘Well done.’
It seemed almost an anti-climax after that when no medical emergency actually arose. People were on tenterhooks all day, waiting for the first case – it would be even more than a matter of saving lives, it would be the historic moment when a Carrearranian left their wor
ld for the first time in their history. No such moment happened that day, though. An elderly woman they thought might be having a heart attack turned out to have a painful case of trapped wind, a woman who cut herself just slapped a leaf poultice on it and was fine, and of the four kids who hurt themselves that day, the worst injury suffered was a grazed chin. They had their first DNR, too – an old man, already very frail, who said he did not want to be taken to the ship if his heart should fail him. He wanted to die there, he said, in his home, with his family around him. After much discussion, it was agreed that the village would not call for help in his case, a decision the Fourth had to respect. Nobody, they promised, would be brought to the ship against their will, or against the wishes of their people.
In fact, Simon was already moving things along, as he’d intended to from the start. He’d already convinced Davie to support him, too, and the two of them came to see Alex that evening. He was holding the watch while the officers had dinner, and didn’t seem surprised to see them moving in on him with purposeful intent.
‘Let me guess,’ he said, as they approached, ‘now we have the snatch pod, you want to use it to bring a volunteer aboard for a medical examination.’
Simon and Davie exchanged brief grins and sat down.
‘You know us so well,’ Simon said.
‘Well, you’re not the only ones who’ve thought of it,’ Alex observed. ‘Not to mention all the people who want to use it to bring back samples of…’ he opened a screen and flicked through a stack of project proposals each of which had lengthy justifications, ‘sea water, ground water, soils, rocks, fruit, foliage…’ He gestured to indicate that the list went on and on. ‘Silvie,’ he added, ‘would like some of the little yellow fish. Live ones.’ He gave them a cool look as they both spluttered with laughter at that. ‘I’m saying no.’ He said. ‘It’s an emergency snatch pod and I am not going to repurpose it for collecting samples. We’re already on that, and the first drones will be collecting samples from tomorrow. As for the idea of bringing people up, of course, I have considered it, primarily for a diplomatic meeting. But you know as well as I do, or should, that the psychological impact of people leaving their world for the first time is massive, it isn’t fair to ask it of them and the decision has already been made that we go to them first.’
