Stardoc (29 page)

“It was not always possible for my kind to speak. Selective breeding altered the physiology of feral Chakacats, who were released back into the wild to repopulate our kind a century ago.”

“Making you all the more valuable.”

Alunthri contemplated me for a moment. “You have done the same in your society. Trained simpler species to perform complicated tasks. Enhanced their desirable qualities by hybridization.”

I was aghast. “But not to be slaves!”

“Domesticated companion, agricultural worker, food producer - all forced against their nature to perform a task for a dominant species. Slaves.”

“Just like Jenner,” I said, feeling ashamed.

Alunthri sprang off the sofa and hurried to kneel at my feet. “You cannot personally assume responsibility for what has been and will always be,” the Chakacat said. “Forgive me for-“

“Don’t do that, Alunthri.” I raised the big cat up and took its paws. “We’re equals here, remember?

And you are right.” I gazed at Jenner and saw him in an entirely different way. I hunched down and stared into his big blue eyes. “Would you have chosen to come here, I wonder? Even chosen to stay with me when I found you, after I fed you?”

Jenner gracefully inclined his head, then padded away. Okay, I’d take that to be a “yes.”

“You should rest now.” Alunthri said. “I regret that I upset you.”

“The truth may be ugly,” I told the Chakacat with a shaky smile, “but don’t apologize for making me see it.”

The three of us settled down for the night. I had almost drifted off when my door panel gave off a single chime. Another emergency, I thought sluggishly. No, they’d signal me via display. Who was it? I rose in the darkness, hoping it had not disturbed the cats, and keyed the door to open halfway.

“Kao?” Guilt washed over me. I’d completely forgotten to signal him since I’d returned to K-2. Some Chosen I was. “What have you-“

He was swaying unsteadily on his feet, his skin a pale, powdery color. “Cherijo.”

“What is it?” I shoved the door panel aside and put my arms around him. “What’s happened to you?”

His big frame shook as he began to cough. “I need-“ His eyes rolled back into his head, and he slumped against me. His breathing was slow and labored. He was burning up with fever.

The contagion.

“Dear God.” From the corner of my eye, I saw Alunthri coming to help. “Stay back!” The Chakacat froze, and I hit the outer door controls with my palm. With a considerable effort, I eased Kao down to the floor. “Alunthri, signal the FreeClinic!” I shouted through the closed panel between us. “Tell them I need a medevac containment team here. Now!”

I insisted on full biodecon before we entered the FreeClinic. Once the scanners were clear, the team took Kao’s gurney straight to the isolation unit. Dr. Mayer appeared and listened as I quickly related Kao’s symptoms.

“Did you review my report on what Crhm had found in Karas’s lung tissue?” I demanded.

“Yes,” the chief said. “Report to Isolation. I’ll discuss this with you later.”

That was fine with me. I turned and ran.

By the time I got there, Kao had been stabilized, but the pneumonic symptoms were growing worse. Dr.

mu Cheft was put in charge of the case, and stood towering in his containment suit as he reviewed the chart data with me.

“He’s in excellent health, Cherijo; that’s why it took so long for the symptoms to appear. From the infiltrates I’m seeing, he’s been walking around with this for some time.”

Had Paul infected him? “We need to culture a sped men of transtracheal aspirate. And check for a gastropleural fistula.”

One recessed eye swiveled to stare at me through the plasplate over his face. “You suspect bacteremia?

Even though the scans are negative?”

“I’ll suspect anything and everything at this point, Daranthura.” I lifted my hand to tug a biocontainment suit from the storage rack, but his suit-covered flipper gently touched my hand.

“Low-level containment protocols, Cherijo. Only one physician to be exposed at one time.”

“I may be infected myself!”

“You just came up clear on the biodecon scans.”

He had me there. “Did you scan the pleural cavity?” 1 described the biological fluid Crhm had found.

“The chief ordered that scan be done first,” mu Cheft said, “and no, I did not find it.” The ‘Zangian checked his readings once more. “Multiloculated empyema, and negligible lobar tissue damage, although that may change in relation to progression of tumefaction. No pathogenic cause detected.” He copied the chart contents to a data pad, which he handed to me. “You’d better study this over, see if you can make some sense of it.”

“Damn.” I gnawed my lower lip as I looked through the barrier to where the man I loved lay unconscious. “Has the chief initiated a full quarantine yet?”

“No. Dr. Mayer feels that will cause unnecessary panic.” Mu Cheft flapped a flipper at my exasperation.

“You know he has the final word. Go, do some work, it will take your mind off this.”

“He’s wrong,” I said as I stalked off to my lab with the chart. Once there, I put in a signal to the chief at once.

“Dr. Grey Veil,” my boss said from his office.

“We need to institute a level one quarantine,” I said without bothering to keep the edge from my tone.

“Now.”

“That would assuredly invoke colony-wide hysteria over a contagion that we can’t prove exists. Dr.

Grey

Veil, until you can provide clinical evidence to support your hypothesis, there will be no further escalation in quarantine protocols.”

“What about Karas’s missing lung tissue?”

“That is inconclusive.”

“I disagree.”

“That is your prerogative.” Mayer signaled off before I could respond.

I could fume, or I could work. So I worked.

I’d gone without sleep for days, back in Medtech. Now I was determined to nail this bug down, even if I never closed my eyes again.

First I reviewed the entire autopsy on Karas, and initiated a database search to locate any other fatalities in the Quadrant who displayed the same cause of death. No correlation. I ran a comparison between individual case notes from Rogan and Dalton’s charts, including data on their individual physiologies, since Rogan was half-Terran. No correlation. I tried the same thing with different combinations: Karas and Kao. Rogan and Kao. Dalton and Karas. No correlation.

Teeth gritted, I spent hours programming an analysis program that took all pertinent data from all the potential contagion cases and ran a comparative study, citing such minor details as where the patients’

quarters were located in relation to each other. Sixteen hours later, I got my answer.

No correlation.

As I was staring at the screen, unable to believe there was no relation between any of the cases at all, I was signaled from Isolation. It was a very weary-looking mu Cheft.

“Doctor. Pilot Torin has entered a coma.”

While the man I loved lay dying in an isolation ward, I found myself sipping cafe au lait and studying an uneaten brioche. Shock combined with exhaustion, I thought. That was the only way I could be drinking coffee. I didn’t care, either.

No one approached me. Even Lisette sensed I was in no mood for her usual borderline contempt, and kept her distance. Good thing, too. I might have knocked her on her elegant posterior.

Kao Torin was going to die. I watched the cafe grow cold. Because of me. My fingers tightened around the server until my joints bulged. My fault. He would die because I was incapable of identifying the pathogen.

“Dr. Grey Veil.”

In that hellish vacuum, I lifted my eyes to see Chief Linguist Duncan Reever standing next to my table.

“Reever.” I sipped the lukewarm cafe that I could no longer taste. “It would be you.”

He took the chair opposite mine. Reever was either a brave man, or bent on suicide, I couldn’t figure out which.

“I understand your friend, the Jorenian, is in critical care.”

Something in me flared back to life. “He’s not dead yet, Reever.”

He looked at me. Saw I hated him just for being there, healthy, breathing, alive. It didn’t seem to bother him.

“Dr. Mayer tells me you are conducting research directly related to treating Torin’s condition.”

“For what it’s worth.” I put down the server with great care, suspecting I might smash it otherwise.

“The contagion has not been identified.”

“No.” I did smile now. A baring of teeth often proceeded a howl of fury. “I have not identified. the contagion.”

Lisette appeared to replace my tepid cafe and remove the unwanted brioche. She handed a server to the chief linguist, then placed her palms on her hips.

“You are bad for business,” she told me. “Drink your cafe. You.” She turned to Reever. “There is no one who needs you to talk for them?”

“Not at the moment.”

“Then, shut up, or go away.” Lisette stomped back into her stand.

I watched her through dull eyes. “I never thought I would like that woman, but I do.”

Reever sat back. “Lisette seldom fails to state her opinion. You are remarkably alike.”

“Don’t tell her that.”

“She doesn’t sulk.”

That penetrated my desensitized emotions. I gulped more of the cafe, scalding my tongue in the process.

The pain, however, barely registered. “Implying that I do.”

Reever’s hand reached out and covered mine. “You won’t find a cure here, will you?”

I turned my fingers, gripping his hand. Surgeons have very strong hands, and know exactly where to apply pressure for maximum effect. His scars shifted over the bones as I tightened my grip.

“Take Lisette’s advice, Reever,” I whispered, knowing I was hurting him. “Go.” I flung his hand away.

He left. Lisette kept me supplied with cafe until I couldn’t bear sitting there for another moment. Maybe it was the suns’ warm light, or all those unsuspecting colonists strolling by me. I tossed too many credits on her counter, and she slammed them back in my hand with a snarled obscenity.

“You insult me,” Lisette said, and somewhere in those smoldering eyes I saw compassion, and friendship. “Go home. Sleep.”

It was good advice. I nodded. Drifted in the general direction of the housing area. Somehow I found my quarters. Collapsed on my sleeping platform. Alunthri covered my cold, shivering body with something soft and warm. Jenner’s rough tongue abraded the tips of my fingers. I burrowed down, hiding my head under my arms. I wanted to sleep forever, convinced Kao would be dead when I woke up.

In my dreams my father came to me.

He was conducting a class in my old Medtech in the auditorium. A full-length image was hung for all to see, an anatomical vid of some bizarre species.

“Prototype design for future generations.”

The students were busy taking notes, glancing up every so often to check the position of the pointer my father used. The image was a dimensional projection of my brain.

“Enhanced intelligence. Yet she could not save her lover.”

Shattering pain burst in my chest, and I tried to cry out. I had no voice.

“Immunity to virtually any disease. Yet she infected an entire population.”

Was it possible? I thought wildly. Could I be a carrier?

“Limitless memory and comprehensive capacity. Yet she will not access it. She will not access it. She will not-“

I was falling into a darkness that welled up from the bowels of Hell itself. The world became black, featureless emptiness, while my lungs flattened, my pulse screamed. I fell into a dry, crackling pile of leaves. They smothered me.

I am with you, Kao said. I twisted, clawing at the leaves, trying to see his face. White eyes stared blindly down at me. A sickening yellow light revealed him, hanging upside down from the branches of a tree, his mouth gaping in the frozen yawn of death.

No, no, no...

Someone else was there. Stronger and larger than I was. The sense of being possessed rushed over me.

Reever? Reev -

I woke to find myself alone, my quarters silent and dark. I sat up, scrubbed my palms over my face. Just a nightmare, I told myself.

Yet I could still feel a sense of something inside me.

Reever, can’t you leave me alone?

The thought that answered was distant, weak. You needed help.

I’ve failed. I can’t identify the contagion, and Kao will die. The other colonists, if they become infected, they’ll die, too. x Not all. Not all

I completed the thought. Not all of them have died, have they? Rogan was still alive. So was Dalton, and the construction crew. Ecla and I were unaffected. Why? The presence within me expanded, became stronger. How close are you? I thought.

Here. Here in you.

It wasn’t Reever.

I scrambled out of bed, only to trip and sprawl on the floor in my hurry. What was it? Was it here, in my quarters? I pushed myself up and frantically searched the rooms. Nothing. The cats were both asleep. I was alone.

No, I wasn’t.

I keyed the door panel and stepped outside.

The corridor was empty.

How is this possible?

In that instant I was smashed down by an incredible wave of thoughts. I fell, huddled, clutching at myself with my arms. An enormous cascade of energy came from inside my mind, blinding me with a series of rapid, disjointed images.

The sight of Karas’s face in spasm as he coughed. The site where Reever first linked with me. Dalton on my exam table. The Engineering site. Ecla’s calm face behind the Assessment console. Reever as he made the second link with me.

An image of my homeworld. Where you belong.

No, I fought the image. I belong here, on K-2. Here, with the people I care for. Here, with the man I love.

Return, return, return -

The thoughts stopped, cut off as if by some merciful internal switch. A horrible fullness rose in my throat, and I made it back inside before I began to vomit. When the spasms had passed, I slid down and rested on the floor until I could trust my legs. The basin of my disposal unit was filled with what appeared to be a regurgitated quart of Lisette’s finest.