Stardoc (3 page)

“I’m taking him home,” I’d said.

“Joey - “

I’d gazed at her once, the way my father did when she got overly verbal. That was all it took.

Later, I was informed by our vet that Jenner was a Tibetan temple cat, a rare breed with royal bloodlines. That was the only thing that impressed my father, who reluctantly allowed me to keep him.

“At least,” he’d said with faint distaste, “it is not a dog.”

At the same time my new kitten had stared back at the great Joseph Grey Veil without blinking, the hair along his neck rising stiffly. He’d even hissed.

I’d lost my heart to Jenner on the spot. Since Maggie died, he was the only friend I had left.

“Go ahead and pout,” I told him. “You’ll get hungry, eventually. Then what are you going to do, Your Majesty?”

Jenner shot me a brief look that promised extensive, painful retribution.

“I’m sorry.” I sighed, crouching down next to the plaspanels. “I know this wasn’t your idea. But I need you, pal.”

Jenner pondered this for a moment, and decided not to argue with me. He rose, stretched gracefully, and padded over to me. Planting himself next to the wall, he lifted his chin.

You may now beg forgiveness.

I was careful not to laugh - Jenner had definite ideas about who was the boss, and it wasn’t me. It took two handfuls of dehydrated fish treats and much scratching and stroking, but he finally calmed down and settled in for a nap. I wondered what he was thinking as he blinked his lapis eyes closed.

Probably scheming how to acquire a larger portion of treats next time, I decided.

As for me, despite my affirmation to Dhreen, I wondered if I could really go through with this -

transferring to an alien world so far from everything I knew. I had no idea how I would be employed by the FreeClinic. The contract I’d signed had no specific duties outlined other than “medical doctor.” Those two words covered a lot of territory.

The alternatives? There were none.

“Hey, Doc,” Dhreen’s voice startled me. I looked over at the wall display and saw his face on the screen. “Strap in - we’re preparing to launch.” The display went blank, and I heard the engines rumble into life. Jenner woke up as I slipped him back into the carrier, and objected loudly as I secured it to the wall. Then I strapped myself in. My fingers felt numb, and trembled more than I liked.

“I’m going to love this,” I said out loud as I tightened my harness. Sure, my inner voice agreed. About as much as finding out what your father’s been doing for the last thirty years.

How had I gotten into this situation? So many decisions to be made, risks to be taken. All by me, whose life had previously been planned out to the minute. And I hadn’t even done the planning.

My father had always decided everything: what I did, where I went, and who I saw. As a result, I had studied to be a surgeon. I had gone to Medtech. I’d never had friends.

After I’d completed my training courses, Dad had me intern in the busiest trauma center on the New West Coast. The first months had been a frantic blur. Snarling senior residents. Endless screens of diagnostic theory. Double shifts in assessment, pre-op, and surgery. When I wasn’t working, I was nearly comatose.

“Sure, she’ll make one hell of a surgeon,” I recalled Maggie once snapped at my father, startling me from a doze I’d fallen in over dinner. “If you don’t kill her first.”

I survived. I didn’t dare do anything else. The few doubts I’d had eventually evaporated. True, dedicating my life to medicine had been Dad’s idea, not mine. In spite of that, each time I held a lascalpel in my fingers, it became more obvious. My colleagues and superiors agreed: I was born to be a surgeon.

I knew exactly what they’d say when they learned of my transfer.

“I never knew Grey Veil was a simpleton.”

“An absolute waste of a promising career.”

“Has she gone completely insane?”

The lure of the unknown held no attraction for Terrans. Only incompetents or reckless adventurers transferred from the homeworld. What sensible Terran physician would trade a profitable career for the perils lurking on all those disgusting alien worlds?

Well, here I was.

I didn’t even know why I had been accepted for transfer. I had no alien experience, and I’d never shuttled past Luna Colony before.

Then again, rumors about the shortage of medical professionals on the border indicated it was a serious problem. The generous transfer incentives were being completely ignored. There was even some talk going around about a possible Conscription Act by League Worlds. I suspected PQSGO was so desperate, they’d take anyone who knew which end of a suture laser to point at the patient.

Hardly flattering, but I didn’t have time to be offended. I had to get off Terra. I accepted the contract.

The data provided about my assignment was minimal. I would be working in a Trauma FreeClinic physician slot on K-2. Apparently these FreeClinics were set up to treat incoming and settled colonists, shuttle crews, and anyone else who needed emergency medical attention. I’d be allocated standard housing quarters - whatever that meant. That was it.

The data about my compensation was equally sparse. I’d be paid directly from K-2’s Treasury. How much and with what wasn’t clearly specified. I’d heard new colonies were usually poor in resources, unless they were part of mining or other lucrative projects. K-2 was located in a densely populated region of space, and they were developing botanical exports. That, combined with a sophisticated barter system, apparently kept the colony operational. So far.

The topic had come up while I was scrubbing for surgery one day. One of the nurses began speculating about transfer incentives.

“Hah! That’s a good joke,” the anesthesiologist beside me said as he passed his hands under the biodecon unit. “I heard they can’t even meet their existing contract obligations. Bet they end up paying the med pros in Cfaric poultry.”

I was being forced to abandon nearly everything I owned for a job and a place to live on an alien world.

Anyone else would have been throwing tantrums.

But getting paid with alien chickens?

There was no choice in the matter. I had to leave. I wouldn’t be leaving behind many emotional ties.

Orphaned himself, my bachelor father decided to have a child, and engaged a professional surrogate. I was the result. Evidently the experience proved to satisfy Dad’s urge for kids, too. I had no brothers or sisters.

My father’s work kept him busy, so I was raised by a succession of domestic supervisors, drone monitors, and hired companions. He’d made sure I’d had no time for friends. Maggie was dead. That should have made leaving the planet all very simple. There was only one problem.

I couldn’t tell Dad I was leaving.

Shortly after Maggie died, I had made an appalling discovery, something I was never supposed to know about. After the shock wore off, I’d gone to the nearest waste disposal unit, and thrown up what seemed like everything I’d digested for a month. Only one person could possibly be responsible for what I’d learned.

Dr. Joseph Grey Veil. My dad.

If he was capable of what I’d discovered, what would he do when he learned I knew every last detail? I knew my father. I could imagine what he’d resort to. Drone surveillance. Forged psych-evals. Personality electra-rehab. Anything to shut me up.

If that didn’t work, well, Medtechs were always looking for fresh cadavers, weren’t they? I’d end up a hunk of practice meat for some green cutters. Dad would be hailed for his unselfish act of charity under devastating circumstances.

My life wasn’t worth a jammed credit.

I waited until he attended the annual System Medical Association Convention on Jupiter’s fourth moon (he was the guest speaker), then began my search for transport.

Dad had influence at so many levels that making the usual arrangements was out of the question. Thus my visit to the tavern district, where I’d met Dhreen and contracted his services.

There was only one problem I had left to face. Kevarzangia Two was inhabited by over two hundred different species. Less than one percent were Terran. Even more alien races inhabited other nearby worlds and traveled regularly through the sector.

Despite seven years as a practicing surgeon, I’d never provided medical treatment for an offworlder.

Ever.

Fourteen light-years sailed past the Bestshot in a blur of color and form. Since the pioneer days of interstellar travel, scientific advances had made the enormous distances between star systems as easily traversed as from one city to another.

“We don’t jaunt a straight track through physical space, Doc,” Dhreen said after I admitted my ignorance of the basic mechanics involved in light-speed travel. “No way to compensate for tangible time loss.”

“Tangible time?”

“Actual duration of physical space - where you, me, the Bestshot, and anything with mass, reside.”

Dhreen made a minor course adjustment and indicated the ship’s central chronometer. It appeared frozen at launch point. “The stuff that makes this turn, in short.”

“So we don’t occupy tangible time?” I tried to reason it out, but it still wasn’t making any sense to me. I was better with practical things like bowel resections and kidney transplants.

“No. The ship’s molecular structure is modified by the shuttle’s flightshield, and the engine drive propels us through - or between might be a better word - real physical space. As a result, we don’t experience significant tangible time loss.”

“The molecular structure modification, does that include us?” I asked, sending a panicked glance down at my body.

Dhreen grinned. “That’s right. For the entire flight, you don’t occupy real space.”

“Hey, I like real space. I like occupying it, too,” I said.

“Nothing the ship accommodates can remain unaltered.”

I tentatively touched my arm. It didn’t feel intangible. It felt like an arm. “Why not?”

“Once the flightshield was initiated, the ship’s altered structure would slip around you.” His inculpable eyes gleamed. “You’d be left hanging in orbit.”

Great. I should have paid more attention during my courses in astrophysics, too.

Despite the ship’s altered composition, there was still visual contact with real space. I watched as we passed through one system after another, the planets swelling majestically as we drew near, then dwindling to mere specks. Stars that shimmered burgeoning crimson, placid gold, and fierce cerulean soon faded into anonymous luminary fields.

The universe was God’s trinket box, Maggie once told me. We used to slip out of the house at night and sit on the precisely manicured lawn, just watching the stars. He had a great collection, she added, but needed to work on straightening it up.

One day the shuttle skirted the edge of a supernova, and I gazed out at the tattered luminescence, wisps of jeweled brilliancy all that remained from an epic stellar explosion. It reminded me of twilight on Terra.

My appreciation dimmed as I realized I could never see that sky again.

No more Maggie, sunsets, or nights looking at Terran star vistas. Never again.

My interest in the exotic panorama around the ship subsided. It was exceptionally pretty, but ultimately there was only one world I was concerned with. Kevarzangia Two.

By the time I’d been on board the Bestshot for a few days, self-induced claustrophobia was setting in.

After a week, I knew a lot more about the Oenrallian. At first I kept my distance, but the crowded confines of the vessel made it inevitable that we spend more time together. I didn’t object. Without his friendly overtures, I would have driven myself crazy. Dhreen was curious about the life of a Terran surgeon, for which he swapped stories of his adventures as a pilot.

“So after two weeks in orbit, I decided to go down and see what the delay was - strictly a humanitarian visit, you understand,” Dhreen said on the last day of the trip.

“In other words, you violated Nbrekkian space without official sanction,” I said. He hiccuped without remorse and continued.

“Good thing I did, Doc. The whole colony was pulverized. Some witless citizen studying alien cultures decided to ferment a shipment of offworld grain. Seems he sampled it, thought it was tasty, and passed it around.” Dhreen shook his head sadly. “It must have been some festival while it lasted.”

“Then the Nbrekkians found out they had no means to digest the alcohol,” I guessed.

“You can’t believe how much gratitude some hemotoxin neutralizer can buy you.”

“You are a blatant opportunist, Dhreen,” I said, then chuckled when he assumed his usual innocent demeanor.

Dhreen took a large portion of the meal I’d prepared, and tasted it with a grin. “Did I mention this is orifice-salivating, Doc?”

“Mouthwatering,” I corrected. To repay Dhreen’s undemanding hospitality, I’d coaxed some more sophisticated dishes from his limited food supplies over the past week. The preparation unit he possessed was, like everything else on the Bestshot, a conglomeration of salvaged parts. Yet with a little inventive programming, I was able to produce some appetizing fare.

It also helped to keep me occupied. The closer we came to K-2, the larger the mistake I might be making seemed to grow. By the last day, it was nearing the dimensions of Jupiter.

It didn’t always help, I thought ruefully, to keep busy. I had no appetite left, and declined to eat my full share of the meal. Dhreen happily polished off the last of the spicy vegetable and synpro stew.

“If you ever decide to give up medicine, you should open a restaurant,” he said, sighed, and glanced down at himself. “I’ve put on at least a couple of kilos with you on board.”

“You’re welcome,” I replied, trying not to sound too ironic as I added, “it’s nice to know I have something to fall back on. So tell me, where are you headed after K-2?”

“Plenty of traders around the border looking for cargo space,” Dhreen said, rubbing one of his almost-ears. I had learned that gesture was the Oenrallian equivalent of a smirk. “Lots of newlies pay hefty credits for return passage to their homeworlds, too.”