by S MacDonald
‘Well… no.’ Even Commander Mikthorn, with his minimal time aboard ships, had experience of the mayhem that was normal around any busy port. ‘If they could actually speak to system control within a workable time delay…’ the possibilities were dawning on him. ‘Patrollers, even, could be directed… and you really think that they can do that?’
‘I really think they can, yes,’ Tan said. ‘At least, I think if it can be done, they will figure out a way to do it. And that is why that project has the highest priority of any research in the League, because the potential is nothing short of phenomenal. Nobody, believe me, would want to pull them out of here against their will. Certainly not Deanne. The offer to move them to Oreol was undoubtedly made because at the point she made that decision, Deanne herself had just been informed that they’d made the breakthrough to a first prototype – and that prototype, as I daresay you noticed, is deployed en masse around Oreol. So she probably thought they might find it advantageous to work there. And I expect, too, that she was mindful of the presence of the Stepeasy. The Stepeasy is, of course, under contract to provide the Fourth with support services…’ he laughed again at Commander Mikthorn’s expression. ‘I know,’ he said, ‘luxury superyacht. But it is all legitimate, totally above board – Alex is notoriously touchy on the subject of Fleet and corporate involvement and he won’t accept so much as a doughnut from the Stepeasy unless it’s properly recorded and invoiced. But they do provide services, tech, sometimes, supplies and carrying passengers. I believe that the Stepeasy took some of the Seconds’ team aboard while they went to Samart, and they would certainly take Professor Parrot and his team aboard, with all their lab tech, if that was where they wanted to work. Obviously, though, they don’t, they’re driving ahead here and any attempt to get them off this ship would have to involve stun guns and handcuffs.’
Commander Mikthorn gave a heartfelt sigh and nod at that, having already been forced to recognise the futility of trying to get those people off this ship.
‘As for that ‘No’,’ Tan observed, ‘I think perhaps that you may just have caught Professor Parrot on a bad day. I know it’s difficult, but if you could try to put yourself in his position just for a moment, to see it from his point of view, he’s leading this absolutely driven research team working their guts out to try to solve problems and make something work that will be of immeasurable benefit to the League, to all of us, their heads are all over the place thinking about things I can’t even imagine, and they are also, remember, on a ship which is busily engaged in exploration and front line exodiplomacy. Put him in the middle of an intensely demanding day with the research full on and your letter arrives with a stack of files to read telling him you want him to move labs. I know his answer was peremptory and dismissive, but I can understand how he could be so irritated by that that he just scrawled no and fired it back into the mail. If he’d taken the time, if he’d had the time to read it fully and respond with an explanation, you could then have understood and shown that to the teams waiting for places. But he didn’t take the time, he didn’t have the time, so you took it for defiance and came haring out here to sort it out.’
Commander Mikthorn gave a reluctant nod.
‘And with the Snowball Syndrome on the roll,’ Tan observed, ‘every discomfort and frustration you experienced on the journey out here just made you all the more angry, so by the time you arrived you were in full-on combat mode, on the attack, furious. And that is not, I should say, something that Alex or the Fourth in general responds to very well. They’re so used to it, you see, having campaign groups screaming abuse at them, I mean, actually screaming abuse at them any time they’re out in public, they’ve developed a coping strategy which is effectively to ignore anyone who is coming at them with that kind of fury. I’m not saying it’s right, I’m just saying that that’s how it is, once you start having a go at them on those anti-Fourth views they close ranks and blank you out. At which you, naturally, came to think that you were the lone voice of reason here and desperate to expose what you believe to be what’s really going on. And in that mood, you see, anyone trying to tell you that you’re mistaken and what is really going on just makes you all the more angry and certain that you’re right. Which is, in fact, the syndrome which keeps campaign groups screaming abuse at the Fourth regardless of how much the authorities try to tell them that they’re wrong.’
Commander Mikthorn looked embarrassed, but defensive with it.
‘There’s no smoke,’ he said, ‘without fire.’
‘There can,’ said Tan, ‘be a great deal of smoke generated by the philosophy of ‘It stands to reason.’ I mean, take the animal rights issue. There are animal rights groups right across the League targeting the Fourth in the unshakeable belief that they are carrying out awful, illegal experiments on live animals aboard their ships. And why? Because Fleet ships do not ever allow pets on board, the Fourth has registered the Heron as a facility for keeping exotic animals and it is utterly beyond belief that they would have done that, that the infamous von Strada would have done that, simply to keep a pet lizard. Even spacers think that’s bonkers. So it stands to reason, doesn’t it, that that can’t be true and something else is really going on. So activists, with their particular mind-set, imagine what they think might be going on, convince themselves that they’ve uncovered the truth and campaign accordingly. And you try telling them that the reality is a pet gecko called Lucky the Fourth got stuck with on ops and didn’t have the heart to put down.’ He gave the commander a smile which held a hint of challenge. ‘No smoke without fire?’
Commander Mikthorn was silent. He was struggling in a morass of confusion and doubts. He was trying so hard to understand, but it was overwhelming. Quite suddenly he felt he was so exhausted by it all that he couldn’t even raise the energy to try any more. He said nothing, could think of nothing to say. He just wanted to be left alone, to crawl into a safe quiet space and huddle away from it all. He was beginning to suspect that he had made a monumental fool of himself, here. Worse, that he had insulted a man who was not only a flag officer but held the same diplomatic status as a system president. That had been brought home to him beyond any doubt when he’d watched Alex von Strada enter that Codicil into League law. That was real, he had changed the law and with evident expectation that the Senate would ratify that, following his lead. And Commander Mikthorn had been rude to his face, and been highly derogatory about him to other people. The enormity of facing that just made him want to curl up and never have to face anyone again.
‘Never mind,’ Tan could see that he looked weary and depressed; too much to cope with all at once. ‘I know it’s difficult, but try not to worry. I know it all seems enormous right now, but really, you know, in the grand scheme of things, it’s just a misunderstanding that got a bit out of hand. No harm has been done, and if you think that Alex von Strada is going to take offence, be out for revenge or hate you forever, you certainly don’t need to worry about that.’ He grinned, suddenly. ‘A guy shot him in the head on Telathor,’ he pointed out. ‘And he didn’t even get that miffed about that.’
Commander Mikthorn remembered. He’d seen it on the news, not long after it had happened, with a continuous cycling replay of the moment at which the bullet had struck the forcefield just millimetres from the captain’s face. He’d been shocked at the time by the appalling violence of it, the fighter tearing in to snatch him out, the screaming, terrified crowd. This was not his world. It just wasn’t his world. And it wasn’t a world he wanted to be part of, either. He had made the biggest mistake of his life, coming out here. What the hell had he been thinking?
‘Never mind,’ Tan said again, consoling. ‘It will all work out, you’ll see. But for now,’ he smiled, ‘I’m going to get you a nice mug of Maltodream – very good for keeping your strength up.’
‘Uh… no, thanks.’ The commander got to his feet, heaving himself up as if the ship had gone into high gravity. ‘I’ll just…have an early night, I think.’ He kept i
t together sufficiently to say a rather meaningless ‘Thank you,’ and with that, went away.
It wasn’t long after that that Rangi Tekawa popped down to the interdeck and visited the commander in his cabin. And some time after that came looking for Tan.
‘Just a quiet word…’ Rangi spoke pleasantly, but he too sat himself down at the table and it was clear that this was not really a social call. Tan was watching his primal bacteria spreading over the planet and playing the factors which would mutate it, but he put it on pause and looked at the medic enquiringly. ‘I know,’ said Rangi, ‘that you’ve studied psychology and I have no doubt that your intentions are good, but could I ask you, please, to be careful with Commander Mikthorn? I can’t, of course, violate patient confidentiality, but…’ He said nothing about the stress alert which had been triggered by the mediband the commander was wearing, nor did he mention trembling, hugs or the need for a ‘muscle relaxant’. ‘He is more fragile,’ Rangi said, ‘than you might think.’
‘Ah.’ Tan said, and gave a wry grimace. ‘I’m sorry. Understood, Doctor.’
‘Thanks,’ Rangi gave him a smile for that, and nodded at his comp. ‘Good game?’
‘I’m hoping,’ said Tan, ‘to found an empire of purple psychic spiders.’
‘Cool.’ Rangi said, getting up. ‘When you’ve got them spacefaring, head over to the Fourth’s galaxy. There’s some really funky stuff going on there.’
‘I can’t wait!’ said Tan, and they parted with a chuckle.
Eighteen
They had their first on-board patient that night. She was one of the elderly people already being tracked for medical observation, so it was not entirely unexpected when she suffered a stroke.
For this, the Carrearranians themselves had no effective treatment. The best that they could do faced with a patient paralysed down one side and unable to talk was to put them to bed and give them an herbal medicine to soothe their agitation.
In this case, though, they called in the Fourth. It was the village healer, in fact, who declared the medical emergency and organised them carrying the patient to the shuttle when it landed on the beach. Gently, they lifted her into the softly lit cocoon, then stood back as requested and watched the hatch close and the shuttle take off. Many of the villagers were hanging on to one another as they watched it ascend, most of them in tears, all of them consumed with anxiety.
Forty seven minutes later, it was back. Again, the hatch opened and there was the patient, lying comfortably on her side, eyes closed. For a moment it was feared that she was dead, but the healer, who’d been in contact with Rangi throughout, assured them that she was just asleep. They must, he said, take her quietly to her bed so that she could wake up there, in her home.
She did, at which the moment which should have been one of high drama and historical significance descended into farce. Far from being amazed to find herself cured, the patiently refused to believe that she had even been ill in the first place, still less that she had been on a shuttle and up into space.
‘You’re making it up,’ she accused, and smacked one of her grandsons, himself middle aged, around the ear. ‘Don’t tell stories!’ And, when the crowd of villagers clamoured to tell her that it was true, she still would not believe it. The last thing she remembered was being outside the house, sitting on a pad of woven leaves and pounding hardnut in a pestle. ‘I just got dizzy!’ she insisted. ‘It was hot.’
She would not be convinced, even by the discovery that her arthritic hip no longer pained her and that a lurking abscess under one of her few remaining teeth had ceased to niggle.
‘I said we could have done more,’ said Simon, discontentedly. He’d rushed in with enthusiasm to their first patient, all the more keen because it was a neural case and he described himself primarily as a neurosurgeon. Repairing the damage caused by the stroke had been disappointingly easy, though – something, he said, that any half-baked second year student could have sorted out. He had gone on to sort out the arthritic hip and do some basic dental work against Rangi’s protests that they only had consent for emergency life-saving treatment. As Simon himself had acknowledged, too, waking to find that her body had been transformed while she slept would in itself have been deeply traumatising for the patient. As it was, she was in evident denial, refusing to admit that she’d been sick even when the villagers asked the Fourth to show her footage of her being carried to the snatch pod. Her final word on the subject was to smack another of her descendants round the ear and tell them all, very decidedly, ‘Don’t be silly!’ Then she went back to her preparation of the hardnut for the evening meal.
At Simon and Rangi’s request, once they’d finished arguing it out between them, the people of Carrearranis were asked to give a three-tier medical consent, with their verbal agreement recorded and held to be valid consent for the purpose of medical ethics. The first level of consent was for emergency life-saving treatment only, and very few people refused that. The second was for the treatment of such conditions as arthritic hips and dental work, to be authorised at the time by the patient’s next of kin. And the third, the one Simon was really hoping for, was a blank consent for the doctors to do whatever they considered to be necessary.
Simon didn’t get many takers for that. The Carrearranians had a good deal of trust in the Fourth in some things, but that trust was not universal. They would not, for instance, put much faith in Alex von Strada’s ability to handle storms. Where medical treatment was concerned they showed a hard-headed reluctance to give the doctors liberty to do whatever they liked. Who knew what they might get up to, those crazy star people? You might, as one influential islander observed, come back with your feet on the wrong way round.
Simon and Rangi, therefore, had to settle for a remit for emergency response and next-of-kin approval for elective treatments. Even more disappointingly, of the four further patients they had over the next four days, only two next of kin would agree to any of the elective treatments offered by the medics.
‘They just go, ‘Oh, that’s all right, thanks!’’ Simon reported at the next morning’s briefing. His tone was disgusted – here he was, as he would say himself, the best medic in the League, offering these people truly miraculous services, and they wouldn’t even let him fix a bunion.
‘Well,’ Alex grinned, casting an eye over the project review which analysed how things had gone with their first five patients, including costs and diplomatic impact. ‘It’s all looking good.’ He gave the medics a nod. ‘Clear to go to phase two,’ he said, and signed off on the project accordingly. This meant that he no longer had to authorise the launch of the snatch pod himself that the medical service could start to function more independently.
‘So I should think,’ said Simon, folding disgruntled arms and drawing breath to embark on telling Alex that it had been outrageous in the first place to subject the medical provision to a supervised trial period. Rangi, though, poked him sharply in the back, and by the time Simon had looked up over his shoulder and given his colleague a glare, Alex had already moved on.
Commander Mikthorn, watching, was conscious of a twinge of envy. In terms of herding cats, dealing with Simon Penarth was like trying to handle a prowling tiger. It was impressive, really, to see how the Fourth managed him even in his most ferocious mood. Even more impressive, though, was how quickly and casually they did move on. The emergency medical service had won Commander Mikthorn’s own approval – admiration, even, though privately and somewhat grudgingly given. They were saving lives, no question – every patient brought to the ship would have died without that intervention, because that was the criteria on which they were brought up. The Fourth could have spent some time, there, justifiably, celebrating their achievements with that project. Instead, they just signed off the trial and went on to the next item on the agenda. This came under the heading of ‘Law and Order’, which was Buzz’s particular responsibility.
‘Davet is on the move again,’ he reported. ‘And given that there were mul
tiple slaps and pokes with a stick to get him on the boat…’ There were grins and quick cracks of laughter at that, ‘another eviction.’ Buzz concluded.
Tan raised his hand slightly, indicating that he wished to ask a question, and at Alex’s nod, ‘Is it possible to clarify,’ he requested, ‘whether he is being punished primarily for rape or for damaging a tree?’
Alex looked at Buzz, who smiled. One of the fundamentals in first contact was to evaluate how the other culture dealt with miscreants and malcontents – what was defined as criminal and how that was dealt with, and what tolerance there was within the society for differing views and opposition to whatever form of authority constituted government.
On Carrearranis, the answers had been simple. There was no culture of power-politics or of dissidence here. People who were not happy on their islands and didn’t get on with the elders just went somewhere else. This was normal anyway, particularly amongst young people – even though their boats rarely made any journey longer than that to the nearest island, this island-hopping network meant that it was possible to travel right around the world. Young men and women often set off to visit distant islands, particularly if they’d struck up something of a romance with somebody there. Sometimes they came back married, sometimes they stayed there. And everyone, but everyone, every adult had been at least as far as the neighbouring island at some time in their lives. Doing so was a rite of passage in itself, when you were considered to be old enough to go with the grown-ups on a visit.
