Ordinary circumstances? These weren't. The FTL ship had a huge appetite, whether or not any tests were going on, whether there was success or failure. And without success, everything went out, nothing came in. Breakthrough Unlimited's payroll was loaded with highly skilled, expensive talent. And now there would be massive medical bills. Tumaini would be a long time recovering, and he had a family to help care for, financially. The doctors had tried hard to save Rue, and they were entitled to payment for their noble efforts. Nobody was putting a recovery date on Morgan. At the very least, Brenna was looking at costly round-the-clock med staffers and rehabilitation therapists for months.
Her secretary's image flashed on one side of the screen, a row of figures on the other. "Okay on this one, Tash," Brenna said, lightly touching the surface and picking a stock option. "Put this one off, at least until July. Assign Noelle. She can be soothing as all hell. Besides, I think she's got hormones for that guy. Did you get the update on the pilots' schedules? Good. Work with Yuri when he gets down there. This one ... mmm ... let's wait on it, too. I don't want to touch any of Morgan's mining capital. We're going to need every ounce of that. Check with SE Industrial Division and SE United Asteriod Mining Inc. See how manymore mass driver ore carriers they can turn out for us in the next fiscal year. The more we send Sunward and the more we sell on Mars and Earth, the better. Okay on this one ... contact Miller. I need some legal brains…
"Your aunt suggested..."
"I'll bet! Eli? That unctuous non-contrib doesn't meddle with my money! I do not want her pet lawyer sniffing around my affairs. Flatter her and tell her no, thanks, but we've got a contract with Miller and that's that."
"It'll be done, Brenna," the secretary promised.
"All set for Dian's arrival here at the hospital? The way her timing looks now, she'll just about match orbits with us when she and my father will have to turn around and head back to Earth. Dad's due at the Protectors of Earth Supreme Assembly awards session later in June."
"Oh, that's been postponed," Tash said. "Sorry, didn't I get an update to you? More neo-anthrax. P.O.E. has put off the ceremony until August."
Brenna programmed her own entries to agree with that changed calendar. "Okay. Makes sense. Let's keep our own people out of the quarantine-closed areas until P.O.E. gives the all-clear. The delay will take some pressure off my father, anyway. He needs to rest up before he has to rub elbows with all those Earth politicians..."
The upcoming awards ceremony was a hokey one, a performance put on for Protectors of Earth's global constituency. The excuse was a commemoration of first contact between Vahnaj and Earth and of Ambassador Quol-Bez's arrival on Earth. Now, particularly after the outrageous attack on Terran Worlds Councilman Ames, P.O.E. would need to polish its tarnished prestige and show the alien that the fanatics had nothing to do with legitimate Earth interests. Protectors of Earth wanted desperately to join the big guys, out there, in the galaxy. Honoring Quol-Bez and his "kin-friend" Todd Saunder was a good way to do it. They staged this display every year, making speeches about Todd Saunder's wonderful contributions to humanity— when some of those same elderly speechmakers had once been bitter opponents of Brenna's father, during the Crisis of 2041! They would drape posthumous awards on Ward Saunder, too, and Todd would accept them all with thanks. Brenna could recite the phrases by heart. "... Ward Saunder, that inventive genius, and to you, his son, who carried his quest on into the future..."
"... thank you, and if my father had lived to witness these great events, I know he would thank you, too." The ceremonies were very formal, very impressive, and very boring. Brenna's father hated them and would have ducked out, gladly, if he could have found an excuse. Brenna suspected Quol-Bez was equally bored by them, but presumably he was paid to be bored, among other things.
Brenna was glad they had postponed the awards session for another reason, a very private one. Neo-anthrax. Even if all precautions were taken, she didn't want her father anywhere near an outbreak of that stuff, or any other pandemic. One of the family secrets was Todd Saunder's phobia about pandemics. He had been traumatized by the biological warfare outbreaks when he was a kid, even though no one close to him had died as a result, as Derek's mother had. Brenna and her mother had seen the ComLink executive reduced to shivering helplessness, racked by nightmares, by a near-approach of one of the old plagues. Todd Saunder wasn't going Earthside until the current outbreak was bottled up and stomped, not if his wife and daughter had anything to say about it!
Her thoughts drifted to the other honoree at the ceremony— Quol-Bez. He symbolized so much, to so many different humans, like the officials at Protectors of Earth, afraid they were losing their hold on Earth's colonies, and like Terran Worlds Council, which sought to take over P.O.E.'s old influence, in the name of those same colonies. Brenna liked Quol-Bez a lot. And he had proved a steadfast friend of the family indeed during this awful ordeal. An alien, a Vahnaj, and a friend of the family. But she wanted to meet other aliens, the representatives of those tantalizing names in the Vahnaj cultural tapes—species named Whimed, Trannon, Ulisor ... Yet ... Earth was stuck in its own backyard.
"Let's take care of the rest of this stuff later, Tash," Brenna said, and the screen cleared. In place of her secretary and financial reports, a standard vid newscast appeared. "... Polk's funeral ceremony was carried on the network and will be available for rebroadcast. Update from Space Hospital, Mars: Dr. Stefan Dybas, chief surgeon, Emergency, says that Breakthrough Unlimited Pilot Morgan Saunder McKelvey, son of Goddard Colony's former governor, Kevin McKelvey, and Mariette Saunder, is still in critical condition. Pilot Tumaini Beno, one-time Space Fleet cruiser commander, is progressing and is now listed in stable condition. He will probably be moved to W.L.F. Mars Hospital later this week. On the labor front, the strike of the United Krill Fisheries employees against Southern Pacific and Antarctic Territories has gone to the bargaining table, and negotiators predict that..."
Brenna muted the sound, staring at the reporter's image but not seeing her.
The stats. All neatly summed up. Breakthrough Unlimited's Prototype II test. Results: one dead, one in critical condition, one progressing but a long way from home.
How much was achieving FTL going to cost? Not in money— as a Saunder, she assumed there would always be more of that coming, from somewhere. But lives couldn't be replaced. Even if one believed in the Spirit of Humanity or another religious philosophy, that still meant that when a person died, he or she was removed from the present plane of existence, perhaps forever. Each person was unique. Cloning experiments, such as those Carissa's illegal labs had pulled off, proved there was no guarantee of producing exact copies by that technique. Those five pitiful little offshoots of Patrick Saunder's genes varied noticeably. Environment, in utero and after birth, nutrition, education, and countless other qualities all acted on a human being. There had been only one Mariette Saunder. One Kevin McKelvey. One Cesare Loezzi. One Rue Polk. One Morgan McKelvey...
No! She would not add Morgan to that list. She had to believe, as Morgan would have if the situation had been reversed. It could have been. The luck of the toss had determined that Morgan would command Prototype II, not Brenna.
Okay. The gamble. That was what set them apart from everyone else. The magnificent wager with Death. The trick was to maintain control. A spacecraft was just a machine. The human pilot was what mattered. Ride her right out to the edge, and bring her back safe. Death was always there, millimeters away. You couldn't make any mistakes, or he would bring everything crashing down around you.
They had made a mistake. A bad one. Somewhere along the line, they had miscalculated. Twice. Four people were dead. Two were still suffering from the blow Death had dealt them. A near-miss? Or...
"Brenna?"
A shock went through her, a totally pleasant sensation. She had almost forgotten how that felt. Brenna thrust the chair back and spun around. Derek stood in the doorway of her quarters. He was still wearing his spacesuit. T
he seals were ripped open carelessly, now that he was within the hospital's life-support. He had ditched his helmet, probably left it in Arrivals, at the hub.
He looked like a man who had broken every speed record and regulation on the books—those communications silences, for one! This was a man who needed a shower, a shave, and twelve hours of uninterrupted sleep.
He looked wonderful.
CHAPTER NINE
Prognosis
Brenna didn't remember moving toward him. But she was suddenly there, holding him close and forgetting the outside world. For many minutes, neither of them spoke. There was no need. Brenna was content simply to be. Oddly, sexuality wasn't part of her feelings. This was far more basic, an emotional nourishment she hadn't known she wanted so desperately, until now. Derek's presence gave her back lost hope, regenerated badly depleted energy. She was startled by the power of her response to him. This reunion was affecting her much more than any previous one with Derek.
Like father, like daughter. I'm getting older. I can't take these events and bounce back as well as I used to...
Distantly, as if it had happened not to her but to someone else, Brenna recalled the scene in FTL Station during the first Prototype's test three years ago. That was before Derek had joined Hiber-Ship Corporation. He had been there as an observer, a friend, when disaster struck. Stunned, Brenna, Derek, and Morgan had seen the readings, the explosion—Brenna and Morgan from Chase ships, Derek from the satellite. When the cousins had returned to FTL Station, they had cast aside, for a brief period, the constraints of their profession and clung to each other like children. They were playmates again, suddenly confronted with overwhelming grief. They smothered that breakdown in emotion as quickly as possible, hiding their pain. Defenses went up. The space pilots' unwritten code.
Never let Death know he scored a direct hit.
In retrospect, Brenna felt cheated. She ached for what they had endured when they all bottled up that hurt. In private, later, she'd wept. She knew that Morgan and Derek had, too, mourned Mari, Kevin, and Cesare. They didn't speak of it, not to each other nor to anyone else. They said all the things expected of them, while the cameras stared ruthlessly: "Those who died would have wanted it this way." How many times in human history had that been said, as agonized survivors crawled out of the wreckage of their emotions? How many other pilots went through that sham of composed faces, dry eyes, in public? Was it a hero mythos? Whatever it was, it was a prison. Chin up! Carry the look of eagles! Brave sadness, but no tears. Never any tears.
But now she was crying, guilt and anger pouring from her eyes. Derek held her, and she could feel him shuddering. He was weeping, too. For once they had privacy. Nobody would see them releasing their pain in this way. The tears helped enormously. Brenna had been embarrassed when her father had been so crushed by Morgan's accident. How dare she be so cold-blooded and stand in judgment of him? She recoiled from that moment, disliking herself and the stupid code that made her behave in such a way.
Finally, they were able to release one another and even smile a bit. Derek peeled out of his spacesuit, with Brenna's help. He rubbed his face with his knuckles, reddening the skin. Brenna laughed softly. The sound surprised her. She hadn't laughed since before the accident. "I'll bet you and the ship are both out of fuel. Whatever it is that cats drag in, you look like it."
Derek laughed, too, bone-weariness making his voice raspy. "I suppose I do. I can't imagine why." He dropped heavily onto the bed, sitting in a slump, his hands dangling across his long legs. "It's nothing compared with what I'll look like after Yan and the other board members get through with me. You're right; I drained the ferry, getting here. Piled it on and decelerated like hell."
"Hotshot," Brenna said fondly. She touched his cheek, tracing the dark lines under his turquoise-blue eyes. "If they give you any trouble, I'll sic Saunder Enterprises on them. Carissa's got some money in their stock..." She gazed at him, abandoning the attempts at humor. "I don't have any words to tell you what your being here means. I love you for coming back."
Derek drew her hand to his lips. "How could I not come back?" Then he grimaced. "I stopped by ICU on my way up here to the visitors' quarters. Spirit of Humanity! I'd expected it to be bad, but... God! Tumaini seems to be coming out of it okay. But Morgan...!"
Brenna sat beside him. They leaned together, not embracing, though their heads touched lightly. Brenna knew she should tell Derek to get into the refresher and shower and log some sleep time. He was wasted with fatigue. Yet she was reluctant to move or to break the silent rapport they were sharing.
They both sensed a third person in the room. Brenna stiffened, peering at the door. Dr. Ives was standing there, waiting on the threshold. Helen forced one of the shakiest smiles Brenna had ever seen, and apprehension roiled the pilot's viscera. Brenna half rose. "Morgan? He isn't...?"
"No, he's alive. Relax. Both of you." Just the same, there was a defeated note in the words. Without an invitation, Dr. Ives dragged the room's chair along its track, swiveled it to face Brenna and Derek, and flopped herself onto the cushions. Brenna was about to explode when the older woman began to explain. "As a matter of fact, we now see every indication that he's going to stay alive."
"Ha! Okay! I knew it!" Brenna shouted. Derek was on his feet, hugging Brenna and dancing her around. They kissed and laughed and exulted, Brenna exclaiming happily, "I knew it, I knew it! Nobody can beat a Saunder or a McKelvey for long!"
Slowly, her elation faded. Dr. Ives wasn't joining in. "What is it? You said he was going to be all right."
"I said he was likely to stay alive. That's not the same thing." The space medicine specialist looked quietly angry at someone or something Brenna couldn't see. "You'd better sit down. Stefan and I have gone over this with the burn rehabilitation team, trying to make it come out more hopeful. We can't. At least the syntha skin and pleural substitute are working fairly well now. He's loosing less, every day. We were afraid these injuries would be too severe for anyone to overcome. But, as you say, never underestimate a McKelvey. No doubt Dybas's staff will get a fantastic medical presentation out of his case for their next all-planets trauma conference. They literally performed miracles for Morgan. Of course, his stamina helped, even while he was unconscious. He's the worst burn case they ever tackled, with such extensive exterior and interior wounds." Helen Ives paused, then finished with a soft "Damn."
An ominous atmosphere filled the small cabin. Derek frowned. "Obviously there's more. What is it?"
"He's coming to," Dr. Ives said. "That's not an unmixed blessing. It means he's getting stronger. It'll also mean he'll become aware of what nerve endings he has left and how badly his lungs are affected. In other words, he'll start to feel what happened to him." Her voice trailed off, and another painful silence fell.
"Doctor, I'm tired," Derek said harshly. "You wouldn't believe how tired. I've broken so many rules to get here that I've lost count of them. I'm in trouble with my employers—I don't yet know how much. I'm seeing Brenna torn to pieces with worry. And I'm worried sick, too. I should be a gentleman and wait for you to deliver your news at your own chosen speed. But I refuse. Dammit, quit circling us! What has happened to Morgan? We're not fools. We can see him in ICU. He's not the first friend I've had to pray for through a crisis. We know he's going to have a rough road. If you don't give us some answers right now, I'm going to shake them loose—from somebody!"
Brenna was amazed. She had never heard Derek forget his chivalry this way before, certainly not with an older woman. He knew Dr. Ives almost as well as Brenna did, and he respected her. But no patience was endless, including Derek Whitcomb's.
"How much praying are you prepared to do, this time? Very well. Straight." Helen Ives cued the terminal, calling up a view from ICU. They saw Morgan in the stera-gel tank. He was moving restlessly, pathetic twitches, like an infant with no control over its limbs and no strength at all. A medic in infection-proof clothing floated beside the tank, operating waldos to apply me
dication inside the box. Brenna wanted to shove that figure aside and break open the tank. Morgan was hurting. Couldn't they see that? Why didn't they help him? She knew why, intellectually. That didn't shut off the empathy. The new syntha skin looked very strange, as the medics had warned it would. It wasn't oozing or blackened or blistered with ruined spacesuit pieces, as Morgan's flesh had been right after the explosion and fire. But it wasn't human skin. The color wasn't quite right, and it was much too tight, almost inflexible. Brenna knew from reading first-aid literature that the tautness had something to do with reducing formation of scar tissue. It also reduced the humanness—by appearance—of the burn victim within that replacement skin.
Helen Ives's expression betrayed her deep personal involvement with her patient. But her voice was toneless, like an old-fashioned computer. She ticked off points on her fingers as she spoke. "One: He's lost the effective use of his hands and fingers. When he's stronger, we'll implant myoelectric prosthesis tendons and bones under the new skin. They'll work well. But touch sensation will be almost nil, I'm afraid. Modern medicine has its limits.
"Two: His throat and larynx are hopelessly scarred. He's also lost the nerve endings in his lips, tongue, and nose. Again, we can effect substitutes nearly as good as the originals. But he won't have much sense of taste or smell. And he'll have to learn how to speak all over again. He will have a voice, once he gets onto the tricks of using an artificial larynx and how to move his tongue and lips even though he can't feel them ... plus the problem with his lungs. That's a major one. It will last for months. We don't know if the synthetic pleural materials will ever adequately take over for what he's lost. We're hoping to bring him back to sixty percent or so of what he had in breathing capability. But of course his body was adapted for one hundred percent. He hasn't got that anymore. Never will have."
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