And just why do you think you suffer from underdraw? But aloud he said, “Dula, you don’t have any Farris-neutral antispasmodics?”
Ilyana answered, “A fancy pharmacopoeia isn’t part of our lifestyle.”
In English, Hogan suggested that they find some substitute for the elements of a tracheotomy set, and start sterilizing them. Fen’s wife, Ora, was in the kitchen, and Digen sent Hogan and Ilyana to find the requisite materials. He set Dula to copying instructions to be sent to other houses where people were sick. There was no way they could move the already stricken to a central location. And, Digen reflected, it wouldn’t necessarily be good to have them together, because one Gen going into convulsions could set off Simes who might otherwise survive.
Digen went in to sit by Roshi and wait, refusing Im’ran’s offer to help. A fanir was not an optimum choice in such an instance. And as a Gen, he could pick up the disease from Roshi. Feeling utterly helpless, Im’ran went to assist in the kitchen.
Holding the fields steady for Roshi, Digen spent the time contemplating what he was going to have to do—and what it meant to him. The shaking plague had killed his family. He was very, very much afraid of it—little-boy afraid, he realized. And something else came to him: a repressed guilt over how glad he’d been that he had not gone out to battle it with his family. He’d been afraid of it even then. Is this why I became a surgeon? To deal with such dangers at a distance? He held out his tentacles to look at them.
Surgery. He was about to do surgery—a tracheotomy, one of the simplest of all procedures. It didn’t take eight years of postgraduate study to learn it. There weren’t even any major transport nerves between the skin and the trachea itself at the point of entry.
Under these primitive conditions, the patient might later die of infection—or might aspirate some blood and die of pneumonia. But the shaking plague was one of those diseases where the toxin in the blood and spinal fluid attacked the nerves, rendering them hypersensitive until, eventually, the patient went into convulsions and strangled to death. The Gen treatment simply bypassed the locked throat muscles with a small hole in the trachea.
A channel would lock into nageric synch and block each convulsive nerve current, preventing the throat from locking.
To make the nageric link with Roshi, who was so dead set against all forms of channel’s therapy—Roshi, who was a Farris channel!—was dangerous. Roshi would fight such a link with all his might. The only way Digen had managed to serve transfer for Roshi had been to play on his need and his total lack of training in controlling the need-based reflexes.
But Roshi had weaknesses even he did not suspect. There were tiny lesions throughout his vriamic node, which had probably given him a hellish changeover and which would surely kill him if he resisted channel’s therapy, even considering the strange vitality he shared with all the Distect Simes.
So, Digen had no choice but to go with the tracheotomy. At least in surgery the patient’s subconscious can’t rise up and slap you dead. But surgery posed other problems. Does Dula know what we’re going to do? Does Ora?
The Distect Simes had the same horror of cutting flesh as did the Tecton Simes—they merely rationalized it differently. Whatever the true basis of the phobia shared by Simes, Digen understood it. The rapid, traumatic loss of selyn triggers repressed fear of attrition.
Suddenly a jolt of dismay lanced through the walls, driven by both Sime and Gen nager—Dula and Ora. Quickly Digen blocked it from Roshi’s perception, knowing that Im’ran had finally made the women understand why the knife had to be sterilized.
Will she let me do it?
By the time Hogan arrived with the impromptu instruments, Dula trailing in his wake, her nager had an ashen texture of horror burned out, of a leaden passage from one nightmare to another, beyond all sense of disaster.
She came to where Digen stood over Roshi and looked down at her husband. “No,” she said, regaining herself. “No, don’t touch him. Let him die if he must, or live if he can. By his own strength.”
Digen, concerned that even the tiniest whisper might set Roshi or Fen into convulsions, motioned her to silence. Ilyana came to Dula, enfolding the Sime woman in the gentle, drifter’s nager, and said, “He’s my brother, too. Joel says it’s simple, and Digen says it’s safe. I’ve seen them perform miracles with their knives. Evil things can be made to serve good ends. Let my brother live, Dula.”
So insistent was Ilyana’s nager that Dula said gravely, “My mind tells me you’re right. But I can’t feel it.” She turned toward Fen, fearful of approaching the Gen yet loving him scarcely less than she loved Roshi. Hogan was beside the bed, examining the Gen, sponging the fever-brightened skin with alcohol.
Im’ran said, “It would be difficult and painful for you to watch, Dula. And your pain would affect Roshi’s chances of surviving. We’ll call you as soon….”
Suddenly Fen stiffened and a strangled gurgle wrenched from him as his whole body went into spasm and his arms and legs vibrated to the intensity. As a well-trained team, Digen, Hogan, Ilyana, and Im’ran all acted simultaneously. Im’ran scooped Dula out of the room, and Ilyana moved to assist Hogan while Digen held the fields to protect Roshi.
With a quick stroke, right behind Ilyana’s disinfectant swab, Hogan opened Fen’s trachea. Each of the Gens was holding Fen still with one hand and working with the other. At the stroke of the knife Ilyana averted her eyes, but she didn’t flinch. The moment it was over, she was handing Hogan the sponges and then the lubricated gauze packing as if she’d done this a hundred times, though she’d only been drilled verbally in the kitchen. Digen felt her shaking inside. Fen had been part of her family for too long, was too close to her. She shouldn’t be subjected to this—but who else is there?
Roshi’s system, despite all Digen could do, was trembling in response to his Donor’s bone-cracking spasms: It was only a matter of time, Digen knew, and there was no point in further delay. “Ilyana, get Im’ to re-sterilize the knife. I’m going to require it.”
She nodded, but her teeth were clenched tightly. Fen was drawing air through the hole in his neck as Hogan applied artificial respiration to the locked chest muscles. Ilyana left with the instruments, and Digen’s eyes met Hogan’s, sharing a silent thought: If only we had the drugs.
Digen ached to cross the room and make full lateral contact with Fen—to still the spasms and ease the tormented nerves of the Gen. He was holding the screeching cacophony of Fen’s nager at bay only by iron determination. And he knew this was only the beginning of a battle that would last for weeks and be fought in every house in the settlement.
He was steeling himself, summoning himself as he had always done by Zeor discipline to enter a channel’s functional mode. He knew he could go the distance of this ordeal—however many weeks or months it would, take—because he had once again begun his Zeor exercises.
Ilyana returned with a newly stocked tray, setting it on the stand beside Roshi’s bed. “I’ll help,” she said.
“No,” said Digen. “I don’t want you exposed.”
“I won’t touch his arms.”
“Not the slightest risk,” said Digen. “I couldn’t tolerate –even the thought that you might—I can manage alone.”
Digen picked up the disinfecting sponge made ready in a blue glass soup bowl and turned to his patient, gripping the selyn fields tightly. The sensory shock of the cold liquid wash on Roshi’s skin had to be carefully nulled to prevent convulsions.
Behind him, Ilyana clasped her hands in concentration, feeding her support to Digen in what had become an unconscious and mutual leaning upon each other. Digen let her lock on his systems and steady him to the task. He found, as he fit himself comfortably into the old, familiar work, that his mind stilled from the ceaseless and futile tail-chasing philosophical arguments and came to a burning focus of concentration. It felt good.
Through the newly carved pathways that made him junct, Digen let Ilyana’s gentle strength flow into the j
ob he was doing. His hands moved the knife in a soft caress, just above the sternal notch and well below the thyroid cartilage. The knife, well sharpened, parted the skin, with a shower of selyn sparks, and severed the superficial fascia and pretracheal muscles with a sensory thrine that felt to Digen as if he were cutting his own throat and made Ilyana’s hands fly to her neck. At the anterior tracheal wall, Digen carefully incised the third and fourth tracheal rings.
Ignoring the bleeding, Digen passed the knife to the table via his handling tentacles while at the same time with the fingers, he dressed the edges of the neat wound, with the lubricated gauze. Ilyana picked the sterilized cannula from the soup bowl with salad pincers and handed it to Digen, handles first.
Their eyes met and held as Digen took the breathing tube and, without touching it, used the pincers to insert it carefully into the trachea. He did it so neatly that it barely scraped against the opened flesh and hardly disturbed the nager at all. The geyser-like plume of wasted selyn gradually collapsed and stopped as Digen worked to control the bleeding and superficial local voiding.
Only then did Digen realize that Ilyana had brought both him and Roshi into phase. Everything she did was so easy and natural—so healing.
Digen had worked with juncts—even junct channels like Skip—many times, but not since he himself had become junct. The durability of Roshi’s system had somehow made the entire procedure much less of a feat than Digen had expected. The patient was breathing easily and was not any closer to uncontrolled spasm than he had been before Digen had started.
Across the room, Fen had fallen limp and, though unconscious, was breathing easily. Digen whispered, “Tell Dula it looks good for Roshi. I want her and Ora to come in now. We’ll have to teach them how to keep these tubes clear, what signs to watch for, and what to do. Joel and I must go help the other victims.”
Ilyana nodded and picked up the tray. At the door, she turned and looked from Fen to Roshi. She smiled through a veil of swiftly drying tears. “I’ll have to go with you or they won’t let you in the house.” She slipped out the door.
Waiting, Digen recovered his inner equilibrium. He had done what had to be done with as little thought as possible. But somewhere deep inside, resonances had been awakened from a long sleep. For the first time since he’d left Westfield, memories, tactile, sensory memories of his time at the hospital, of his life as a channel, of all his hopes and dreams, of his entire self-image as the one uniquely able to bring a healing gift—surgery—in-Territory all came back to him, and it called him with a deep, powerful call—Unto Zeor, and Unto the Tecton, Forever.
But somewhere within him a still, frightened voice begged, “No, no, I don’t want to go back!”
His left arm began to throb dully. He looked down at Roshi, still quivering slightly on the edge of total spasm but stubbornly avoiding it. His cousin by their common great-grandmother, also a Farris channel, and also—by his vriamic lesions—a cripple by Tecton standards. But Digen knew that if it were he himself on that bed, he’d not be surviving like that.
Roshi—junct pathways served by Fen as Ilyana served him—had lived his life junct, and it had given him an elasticity of constitution never seen in the Tecton Simes.
Digen’s left outer lateral began to crawl with a prickly sensation, as if somebody were creeping up on him from the left. But Hogan was still far behind him, with Fen. He rubbed it away absently, caught up in his train of thought. For he could feel himself lying in Roshi’s place, fighting off spasm after spasm, death lurking but one slip away, and knowing he was going to die.
In sudden, etched clarity, in high, stark relief, Digen saw that in all his work as channel, keeping Sime from direct Gen contact, he had been like a doctor deliberately infecting his patients with a slow wasting sickness.
What had been done to him during his first year—the stealing away of his second and third transfers to implant conditioning that prevented the junct pathways from opening—the forced development of his secondary system capacity—the arduous exercises to gain command of his vriamic node—They have made of me an abomination!
Trembling in the grip of a wave of self-loathing so strong that he thought only the mentally ill could experience it, he felt the distinct tactile sensation along his injured lateral that meant somebody was standing very close. Annoyed by the claim on his attention, he swung around, prepared to snap out a scathing rebuke. But there was nobody there.
Abruptly he flicked into hyperconsciousness, as if drawn by another’s will, and there before him stood a blazing Gen image—or, no, it blazed in outline only. Within, it was marbled darkness like a Sime in attrition. His hackles rose, his mouth gaped in a silent scream, and his tentacles sprang out rigid in fright.
The figure vanished.
Digen’s world flipped inside out and he was left way down in hypoconsciousness, seeing only with eyes, hearing only with ears. In this curious, flat, stark reality, he knew he had seen that nightmare figure once before. When he’d come to after his accident, there in the Sime Center infirmary room, on his newly blinded left side, it had stood regarding him thoughtfully, only to vanish when he caught it full in his senses. Something in him said that the next time he saw that figure—he would die.
Life is so short. He had spent most of his life living a lie, staggering through existence as a ravaged scarecrow letting the ravens snatch pieces of his substance whenever they chose. Here, in Rior, for a small march of days, he had become real, he had tasted life.
“Digen?” Ilyana had flowed softly into the room, seeing Digen’s fright, which Hogan, his back turned, had missed.
Her field, as she approached him now, brought him gently back to duoconsciousness and a semblance of normalcy. He turned to her and, literally shaking, sank to his knees before her.
“Forgive me,” said Digen, tears brimming around his eyes, “and forgive us all for what we’ve done to you.”
Ilyana went to her knees, reaching out to Digen. “There’s nothing to forgive.”
Digen drew back his hands, afraid that contact might infect her with shaking plague. “I can never go back to the Tecton. Or to Zeor. I cannot live in support of such crushing evil as the Tecton.”
At the doorway Im’ran pushed past Dula and came into the room, having heard most of it. “Digen!” he whispered, controlling his shock so that it didn’t overwhelm Roshi. “Evil? Digen, no.…” His throat caught and he couldn’t go on.
Digen rose, bringing Ilyana with him. He could feel the penetrating thrum of the fanir’s dead-true Tecton standard nager. Less than an hour ago, that trained regularity had been a delightful balm to starved nerves. Suddenly it made Digen feel soiled all over, inside and out.
An unborn sob twisting his upper lip into a trembling sneer, Digen forced words through clenched throat. “Get out of here. Get away from me and stay away. I can’t bear the feel of you!”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
WAR AGAINST A MICROBE
The moment of shock lengthened to a silence stretched thin over the anguished nager in the room.
The faint whistle of air passing through makeshift tracheotomy tubes was the only sound. Digen could feel the prickly sensation all over Im’ran’s skin as the Gen’s blood pressure dropped, then steadied and rose. He could feel the jerky slide of Im’ran’s eyeballs in their sockets as the Gen sought contact with Hogan, frowning as he asked, “What happened?”
Hogan’s bewilderment was a faint undertone, barely perceptible against the two giant Donors, Im’ran and Ilyana, and the incoherent but strong nager of Fen. Hogan said, “Nothing happened! Nothing. He just….”
Digen, overwhelmed by the sudden and absolute reversal of his emotional responses to his friends, turned his back on them. “Get away from me, just get away.”
Ilyana made an abortive gesture toward Digen. “They mean well,” she said. “They just can’t see it.”
Digen held himself taut against it all, and she sensed his state accurately. She turned to the Gens, herdin
g them toward the door. “Later. We’ll talk about it later.”
But they never did. There was no time for talk. As Roshi and Fen passed through the crisis and lived to have the wounds in their necks sealed, to take solid food and regain an awareness of their surroundings again, families all over the settlement begged for the help of Digen and Hogan.
Digen found he could work with Hogan as he had worked with any other intern or doctor at the hospital. Hogan’s nager didn’t make demands on him. And, though bewildered by Digen’s sudden distance, the out-Territory Gen was professional enough to do the job without making emotional contact either with the patients or with Digen.
They lived in a miasma of death and ashen grief, fighting an inexorable rise in the daily death rate. Ilyana learned to do the tracheotomy herself and then trained Im’ran to assist her. Together they went among the sick, teaching families to care for the victims. They would work until, perhaps waiting for a meal or hot drink in someone’s living room, they would fall inexorably into sleep. Pulling themselves awake for the next frantic emergency call, they would slog through mud, rain, or sleet to begin the numbing routine again.
Digen watched Ilyana spend herself for her house and people, the people who had pledged unto her personally and, through her, to Rior. He did not begrudge her the effort. He would have done the same, once, for Zeor. And at the moment he too was giving that same desperate, all out effort to Rior and so could not really criticize her. But he worried. His life was nothing without her. To lose her, before they had really and truly found each other, was too horrible to contemplate.
As time passed, Digen knew in a distant way that need was clamping down on his vitals again, that sometime soon he’d have to stop to take transfer. But always he and Ilyana worked separated by many houses and by a race against time to save as many lives for Rior as possible.
Hour after hour, day after day, patient after patient, Digen went on, doing what was necessary, trying not to think too much. At times he had little idea of whose house he was in or where he had to go next. He worked like an automaton, lucid only when a patient lay under his hands. When he came to see that patient again, the memory would jump to the fore of his mind and all the details would present themselves just as if he were making rounds at the hospital. But, between these moments, there was only fog, which, if it thinned even the slightest, revealed again the crystal knowledge that had come to him over Roshi.
Unto Zeor, Forever Page 29
