by neetha Napew
“No. I will not explain.” Xonea released my hand and stepped toward Pnor. “That is a matter of honor.”
Pnor seemed deeply disgusted. “I dislike being manipulated.” He turned and made an efficient gesture. Three huge Jorenians approached Xonea, took positions on either side and behind him. No one touched anyone else. Jorenians were like that. Without another word the four exited the Medical Bay.
The Captain came to me. “Senior Healer, I regret this.”
“Talk to him, Pnor,” I said, my voice slurred. I couldn’t stop yawning. “Something is wrong with this. With him.”
“Linguist Reever tells me you could not identify the killer.”
I shook my head. “Tried. Couldn’t...”
The Captain pulled a coverlet over me and tucked me in like a child. “Rest. We will talk soon.” He disappeared.
“Squilyp?”
The surgical resident came to my berth. “Yes, Doctor?”
“Administer... stimulate... four hours.”
“But, Doctor-“
“Just... do it... Squid Lips.” I smiled, and fell asleep.
I didn’t dream-the drugs prevented that-but simply slept the deep, serene slumber of childhood. It was wonderful. My over-taxed body and confused mind were happy to shut up and leave me alone.
I woke up when the Omorr dutifully administered an amphetamine. Artificial vitality sizzled in my veins as I sat up and threw aside the cover. Squilyp made a disapproving noise as he began to strip the monitor portals from me.
“I dislike stimulating your norepinephrine levels,” he said. “Especially after the incident during the cortical coupling.”
“You have another cure for complete exhaustion?” I rubbed the back of my neck. “Did you determine how much was introduced to my system?”
“Enough to kill you several times over, had it not been separated and encapsulized. I neutralized both while you were unconscious.”
“Good, then I can get out of here, right?”
He ignored the question and began scanning me. “Any anxiety?”
“Just the normal amount,” I replied. Actually, I was worried about Xonea. Something about the confrontation with him didn’t make sense. He’d seemed out of control, completely irrational. I defend my ClanSister, he’d said. Could he have been following instinct, rather than reason? Acting exactly like any other, rather overprotective Jorenian big brother kicked into overdrive?
“Delusions?”
“Of grandeur? Probably. Otherwise, no.”
The Omorr persisted. “Hallucinations? Tremors?”
“No, Mommy,” I said. “Can I go and play now?”
Squilyp put down his scanner with a decided thump. “I’d like to be your parent. I’d restrict you to your quarters for another month.” He removed the last of the hookups and helped me down from the exam table. “Xonea has been placed in detention.”
“Has Pnor formally charged him with anything?”
“I don’t know.”
I’d have to speak with the Captain, but that could wait. “Where is Reever?”
“Linguist Reever left two hours ago, but did not indicate his destination.” The Omorr fussed over me, straightening my tunic, checking my eyes again. “You seem to have recovered. If you experience sudden mood changes, dizziness, or any other odd sensations, report back here at once.”
“Yes, sir.” I touched his membranes. “Thanks, Squilyp.”
“For enticing me to commit malpractice? Save your gratitude, Doctor.” He sounded brusque and embarrassed, which made me want to hug him. “Go now, before I am tempted to confine you to a berth.”
I left Medical and went looking for Reever.
The best method of determining the location of a crew member on the Sunlace was by accessing the vocollar transmitter. Each device had an autonomous frequency. By tracking that particular signal, you could pinpoint someone’s whereabouts.
The problem was Reever wouldn’t wear a vocollar. A man who spoke a ka-zillion languages didn’t have to. I started at his quarters and worked from there. It took some time. Most of the crew tried to be helpful. Many of them wanted to thank me for my efforts during the last attack. One of them, the ClanMother who had attacked me on level six, actually apologized.
“Your pardon, Senior Healer.” She made a gesture of supreme embarrassment. “I saw only my ClanSon’s injuries. Only later was I told how you saved him and the other children from sharing Tonetka’s path. I thank the Mother that you came to us.”
“Your ClanSon should have never been hurt in the first place,” I said. “That was my fault.”
She gave me an odd look. “And if it were mine? What say you if these mercenaries pursued not you, but me? Or my bondmate? Would you wish us to leave the ship?”
I frowned. “Of course not.”
“You would protect us, would you not?” She smiled. “As you protected the children. As we will protect you, ClanCousin. No one may divide the House.”
That gave me something to think about for the next eleven levels.
Eventually someone told me they’d seen Reever heading into environome six. When I got there, the entrance was secured. There was a program in progress, I saw, and frowned. It wasn’t as if I could knock, I thought, and accessed the door panel circuits. My inept fiddling quickly shorted out the locking mechanism, and the door panel slid open.
Just wait until someone gave me a hard time about my lack of tech ability next time, I thought, and walked in.
I was standing in a Trauma Assessment center. There were dozens of patients waiting to be seen. Behind the main display, a towering, vermillion, insectile form sorted through charts and rapped furiously on a touchpad.
“T’Nliqinara?”
I stepped back until my shoulders hit the simulated wall of the FreeClinic on Kevarzangia Two. Two humans strolled past me and never noticed. One of them was Duncan Reever.
The other one was me.
“Another altercation with Dr. Mayer?” Reever asked my duplicate.
“You could call it that,” she replied. She looked grumpy. Sounded grumpy. I didn’t act like that. Did I? Her exotic eyes narrowed as she glanced at him. “Were you listening at the door?”
“It wasn’t necessary. Both of your voices carry quite well.” Reever halted. “Pause reenactment sequence.” The environome’s imaging systems stopped the simulation. Everyone froze. “Return to last inquiry by Doctor Grey Veil.” The program ran backward for a moment, then restarted.
“You could call it that,” the other Cherijo repeated. Same tone, same sideways glance. I studied her. My nose wasn’t that beaky looking. Was it? “Were you listening at the door?”
“No,” Reever said. “I needed to speak with you. May I-“
My twin ignored him and walked away to speak to T’Nliqinara at the Assessment desk. Reever stood there, looking as frustrated as I’d ever seen him.
So this was when he showed emotions. When my back was turned.
My double returned at last. “Okay, Chief Linguist, I can give you exactly one minute,” she said as she picked up a stack of charts. Oh, give me a break. What was he using to project this? A pompous ass imager? “What do you want?”
“Yes, Chief Linguist,” I said. “Just what exactly do you want?”
Reever whirled around. His usual bland mask cracked as his jaw sprang open in stunned disbelief. My arms crossed as I stared back at him.
“Terminate program,” he said. The other Cherijo and the K-2 FreeClinic vanished. “I secured that door panel.”
“I overrode your security code,” I lied. Well, I had, sort of. “Mind telling me what this is all about, Reever?”
“It is an exercise to practice human behavior.”
“Uh-huh.” I walked over and made a circle around him. “You look pretty human to me.”
“Your invasion of my privacy is inappropriate.”
“I’m not feeling too fond of you myself right now, either.” I planted myself in front of
him. “Why the simulation, Reever? After all, you’ve got the living, breathing version of Doctor Grey Veil on this ship. God knows you’re not the sentimental type.”
“As I told you, practice.” He went to the display, tapped a few keys. “Access Reenactment Sequence R-l.” I saw a vid of the Trading Center on K-2. I was walking with Ana Hansen. Reever was sitting just outside Cafe Lisette.
“That’s the first time we met.”
He nodded. “I have successfully resolved the conflict during this encounter. Instead of questioning you about your genetic heritage, I make general, nonintrusive comments and offered you a welcome to the colony. Your simulated reaction was much more favorable.”
“Nice to know it worked out for you.”
“Access Reenactment Sequence R-2.” Now a vid of my encounter with Reever outside William Mayer’s office was displayed. “Here you were quite upset after arguing with the Chief of Staff. Rather than making what you may have considered at the time provocative remarks, I offered my services as a sympathetic confidant.”
“Let me guess-my simulation cried all over your shoulder.”
“Actually, we shared a brief meal interval and had a pleasant conversation. Later, after Karas died, you came to my quarters.”
“Right.” I reached over and terminated the access. I didn’t want to know what else he had been doing with my simulation. Especially in his quarters. “Reever, do you know why I left Terra?”
“You discovered the illegal activities Joseph Grey Veil was involved with-“
“And I didn’t want to be an experiment anymore.” I swung a hand at the imager console. “Sound familiar?”
He had the good sense to look faintly guilty.
I took pity on him. “You can’t go back and fix the past, Reever. You have to live with your mistakes, and move on.” A painful lesson I’d only just learned myself.
“As I have indicated, I am merely practicing methods of successful conflict resolution.”
He had a lot to learn about his own species, but this wasn’t the way to do it. “Duncan, being human means making mistakes. There is no perfect encounter, no ideal conversation. We don’t get to practice. Part of the process is messing up and learning from that.” I eyed the display. “Have you programmed a reenactment of every interactive problem in your past?”
“No. Only those encounters which involved you.”
I never got to ask why-the environome display emitted an emergency signal.
“Senior Healer, Linguist Reever. Report to launch bay, level eighteen. Disabled Furinac transport vessel is being retrieved. Expect casualties.”
“Good thing we’re close,” I said as we hurried out of the environome. I grabbed his sleeve. “This conversation isn’t finished, Duncan.”
“I did not expect it would be.”
Our path intersected with the medical team on the way to the retrieval. I ripped off my bandages and took one of the emergency packs.
Iolna looked startled. “Senior Healer, are you certain-“
I waved my mostly healed hand at her. “See? It’s a miracle. Let’s move.”
The launch bay on level eighteen was still being repaired from damages acquired during the last attack. In spite of this, Ship’s Operational had managed to send out two launches. They were now towing the crippled transport in to the landing pad. Hundreds of tiny craters scored the Furinac vessel’s hull plates.
“Displacer fire?” I wondered out loud as we waited for clearance to approach. Engineers in protective gear were already crawling over the ship, scanning for dangerous radiation leakage. Had the League taken a shot at the Furinac, too?
“Meteor swarm,” someone said. “Must have flown directly into it.”
The Furinac had barely made it out alive, from the look of the transport. I counted three cracks in the hull that looked deep enough to compromise the internal compartments. One of the engines was so badly battered it was literally hanging on by component wiring alone. A gaping hole between the thrusters was all that remained of the stardrive. Cracked viewports also indicated the interior pressure may have been breached.
“How many on board?” I asked one of the waiting evac team.
“Four that we scanned as alive.”
“The flightshield generator has been ejected,” one of the engineers said as he removed his helmet. “No radiation present.”
While the evac team worked to get the damaged hatch open, I set up a triage area and got our equipment ready. With a hissing screech, the damaged vessel’s hull doors parted at the center seam. A yellow hand thrust through the gap.
“Help! Help me!”
The voice sounded familiar. I approached the transport with the rest of the medics. Reever gave me an enigmatic glance.
“Friend of yours?” I asked him.
The engineers forced the door panels to open wider. At last a corpulent humanoid stumbled out and fell down, face-forward on the docking ramp. His garments were filthy. The stench of his body drifted over to us within seconds.
I knew that smell. It couldn’t be. Fate wasn’t that cruel.
As the medical team entered the transport, I bent down next to the injured being on the ramp. It took a minute and substantial effort to get him turned right-side up.
He stared at me, his lidless eyes bulging at the sight of my face. Around the two orbs, deeply scored parallel grooves held thousands of miniature, grey, writhing polyps. His skin was bright jaundiced yellow. He smelled a lot like a Terran skunk.
“You!” he shrieked. His four lips gaped over pegged teeth, making his sparse mustache separate.
“Hello, Phorap,” I said.
PART THREE: Disclosure
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Aiding and Abetting
Phorap Rogan, M.D.,” Squilyp read out loud as he joined me at Rogan’s berth a few hours later. He looked down at my unconscious nemesis and wrinkled the derma around his nostrils. “He needs cleansing.”
“Among other things,” I said. Once I’d finished making my notations, I handed the chart to the Omorr. “You’re his primary. My condolences.”
“I thought we were friends now.” Squilyp sounded testy.
“We are. Doctor Rogan has refused to allow me to treat him,” I said, pointing out the patient’s emphatic statement listed at the bottom of the chart. “We have an unpleasant history.”
“I see.”
I studied Rogan’s polyp-pocked face. What were the odds that a transport carrying one of my worst enemies would become critically damaged just as it came within range of the Sunlace? No, it couldn’t be a coincidence.
“Come into the office.” I still couldn’t call it mine. “I need to review this mess with you before I go off shift.”
We went through the charts as I summarized what my old nemesis had told the Jorenians before he’d passed out.
“Dr. Rogan and the four other patients were en route to the Furinac homeworld when the pilot lost power. The flightshield became unstable, so they dropped out of light speed and found themselves in a meteor swarm.”
Squilyp skimmed the outline of my report. “What happened to the fifth occupant?”
“The pilot was killed by what appears to be a power surge from the helm controls. The Furinac passengers were injured while presumably guiding the transport out of the meteors.”
“Presumably?”
“We’ve downloaded the transport’s database, which included all medical data for the species, but the linguistic files were damaged. Reever’s working on it.” I didn’t like having to rely on Rogan’s word for anything, but until Reever repaired the problem, we had no way to communicate with the others. I handed the Omorr one chart and added, “Keep close monitor on this one. He’s the oldest of the group, and won’t take much more systemic stress.”
Squilyp nodded and reviewed the patient’s chart display. “No sign of internal bleeding.”
“Keep him on oxygen feed, just as a precaution.” The Furinac had no lungs. Their species
breathed through spiracles, small holes on either side of their exoskeletons.
Squilyp switched off the chart and regarded me. “This Rogan-he’s going to be a problem, isn’t he?”
If he was working for the League, that was a given. I nodded. “He was discharged from his position back on K-2. Phorap has a bit of a God complex.” I refrained from commenting how well Squilyp might relate to that personality quirk. “He’s also incompetent, irresponsible, overbearing, and last but not least, extremely fragrant.”
“Not for long,” Squilyp said. “I will personally supervise his daily cleansing regime.”
“Just don’t underestimate him. And let me know if anyone stops by to visit him.” Though I doubted our killer would be that stupid, I thought, and winced as I flexed my throbbing fingers.
“How are they?” The Omorr leaned over and curled his membranes around my wrists.
“Stiff. Too bad I can’t borrow someone else’s hands for a few days.” I may have healed in an amazingly short time-something I really didn’t want to think about-but my normal range of motion was slow to return. I also had recurring periods of temporary numbness. I demonstrated my lack of dexterity for him and added, “You’ll be the only one manning the lascalpel for a while.”
He manipulated my joints and checked each finger. “Not for long. The regenerative properties of your metabolism are nothing short of miraculous.”
“Yeah, well, that won’t help if we need to start cutting on one of those Furinacs,” I said. “Study the database. See if there are any miraculous qualities to their physiologies.”
He gave me one of his old, lofty glares. “I already have.”
“I should have known.” I grinned. “Mr. Wonderful.”
We made rounds before I finished out my shift. Adaola reported that despite the language barrier, the Furinac patients were being cooperative. Rogan was still unconscious. I left the Omorr to run the ward, and went to my quarters.
My console practically hummed with relays. I muted the audio and ignored it in favor of a lengthy cleansing, a quick meal, and an hour with Jenner.
