Alex stopped talking to her for four hours after that—twenty-seven had been in the bottom rank, and a shot of adrenaline would have brought him out—if it had been allergic shock. But his crate was also buried deep in the stacks, and Alex would have had to peel the whole suit off to get to him. Which Tia wouldn't permit. They had no way of knowing if this was really an allergic reaction, or if it was another development of the Zombie Bug. Twenty-seven had been an older man, showing some of the worst symptoms.
Although Alex wasn't talking to her, Tia kept talking at him, until he finally gave in. Just as well. His silence had her convinced that he was going to ask for a transfer, and that he hated her—if a shellperson could be in tears, she was near that state when he finally answered.
"You're right," was all he said. "Tia, you were right. There are fifty more people there depending on both of us, and if I got sick, that's the mobile half of the team out." And he sighed. But it was enough. Things went back to normal for them. Just in time for the transition to norm space.
* * *
Kleinman Base kept them in orbit, sending a full decontamination team to fetch Alex as well as the Zombies, leaving Tia all alone for about an hour. It was a very lonely hour. . . .
But then another decontamination team came aboard, and when they left again, two days later, there was nothing left of her original fittings. She had been fogged, gassed, stripped, polished, and refitted in that time. All that was left—besides the electronic components—were the ideographs painted on the walls. It still looked the same, however, because everything was replaced with the same standard-issue, psychologically approved beige—
Only then was she permitted to de-orbit and land at Kleinman Base so that the decontamination team could leave.
No sooner had the decontamination team left, when there was a welcome hail at the airlock.
"Tia! Permission to come aboard, ma'am!"
She activated her lock so quickly that it must have flown open in his face, and brought him up in the lift rather than waiting for him to climb the stairs. He sauntered in sans pressure-suit, gave her column a jaunty salute, and put down his bags.
"I have good news and better news," he said, flinging himself into his chair. "Which do you want to hear first?"
"The good news," she replied promptly, and did not scold him for putting his feet up on the console.
"The good news is all personal. I have been granted a clean bill of health, and so have you. In addition, since the decontamination team so rudely destroyed my clothing and anything else that they couldn't be sure of, I have just been having a glorious spending-spree down there at the Base, using a CS unlimited credit account!"
Tia groaned, picturing more neon-purple, or worse. "Don't open the bags, or they'll think I've had a radiation leak."
He mock-pouted. "My dear lady, your taste is somewhere back in the last decade."
"Never mind my taste," she said. "What's the better news?"
"Our patients are on their way to full recovery." At her exclamation, he held up a cautionary hand. "It's going to take them several months, maybe even a year. Here's the story—and the reason why they stripped you of everything that could be considered a fabric. Access your Terran entomology, if you would. Call up something called a 'dust mite' and another something called a 'sand flea.' "
Puzzled, she did so, laying the pictures side by side on the central screen.
"As we guessed, this was indeed a virus, with an insect vector. The culprit was something like a sand flea, which, you will note, has a taste for warm-blooded critters. But it was about the size of a dust mite. The fardling things don't hatch until the temperature is right, the days are long enough, and there's been a rainstorm. Once they hatch, the only thing that kills them is really intense insecticide or freezing cold for several weeks. They live in the dust, like sand fleas. Those archeologists had been tracking in dust ever since the rainstorm, and since there'd been no sign of any problems, they hadn't been very careful about their decontamination protocols. The bugs all hatched within an hour, or so the entomologists think. They bit everything in sight, since they always wake up hungry. But—here's the catch—since they were so small, they didn't leave a bite mark, so there was nothing to show that anyone had been bitten." He nodded at the screen. "Every one of the little beggars carries the virus. It's like E. coli, the human bacillus, living in their guts the way it does in ours."
"I assume that everyone got bitten about the same time?" she hazarded.
"Exactly," he said. "Which meant that everyone came down with the virus within hours of each other. Mostly, purely by coincidence, in their sleep. The virus itself invokes allergic shock in most people it infects. Which can look a lot like a stroke, under the right circumstances."
"So we didn't—" She stopped herself before she went any further, but he finished the statement for her.
"No, we didn't kill anyone. It was the Zombie Bug. And the best news of all is that the Zombie state is caused by interference with the production of neurotransmitters. Clean out the virus, and eventually everyone gets back to normal."
"Oh Alex—" she said, and he interrupted her.
"A little more excellent news—first, that we get a bonus for this one. And second, my very dear, you saved my life."
"I did?" she replied, dumbfounded.
"If I had cracked my suit even once, the bugs would have gotten in. They were everywhere, in your carpet, the upholstery; either they got in the first time we cracked the lock, or the standard decontamination didn't wash them all off the suit or kill them. And I am one of those seventy-five percent of the population so violently allergic to them that—" He let her fill in the rest.
"Alex—I'd rather have you as my brawn than all the bonuses in the world," she said, after a long pause.
"Good," he said, rising, and patting her column gently. "I feel the same way."
Before the moment could get maudlin, he cleared his throat, and continued. "Now the bad news: we're so far behind on our deliveries that they want us out of here yesterday. So, are you ready to fly, bright lady?"
She laughed. "Strap on your chair, hotshot. Let's show 'em how to burn on out of here!"
CHAPTER FIVE
Well, Tia," Doctor Kenny said genially, from his vantage point in front of her main screen. "I have to say that it's a lot more fun talking to you face-to-column than by messages or double-bounce comlink. Waiting for four hours for the punchline to a joke is a bit much."
He faced her column, not the screen, showing the same courtesy Alex always did. Alex was not aboard at the moment; he was down on the base spending his bonus while Tia was in the refit docks in orbit. But since the Pride of Albion was so close, Doctor Kenny had decided that he couldn't resist making a visit to his most successful patient.
The new version of his chair had been perfected, and he was wearing it now. The platform and seat hid the main power-supply, a shiny exoskeleton covered his legs up to his waist, and Tia thought he looked like some kind of ancient warrior-king on a throne.
"Most of my classmates don't get the point of jokes," she said, with a chuckle. "They just don't seem to have much of a sense of humor. I have to share them with you softies."
"Most of your classmates are as stiff as AIs," he countered. "Don't worry, they'll loosen up in a decade or two—that's what Lars tells me, anyway. He says that living around softies will contaminate even the most rule-bound shellperson. So, how's life with a partner? As I recall, that was one of your worst worries, that you'd end up with a double-debt like Moira for playing brawn-basketball."
"I really like Alex, Kenny," she said slowly. "Especially after the Zombie Bug run. I hate to admit this, but—I even like him more than you, or Anna, or Lars. And that's what I wanted to talk to you about when you called the other day. I really—trust your judgment."
He nodded, sagely. "And since I'm not in the brain-brawn program, I am not bound by regs to report you when you tell me how much you are attracted to your bra
wn." He sent an ironic wink toward her column.
She let herself relax a little. "Something like that," she admitted. "Kenny, I just don't know what to think. He's sloppy, he's forgetful, he's a little impulsive—he has the worst taste in clothes—and I'd rather have him as a partner than anyone else in the galaxy. I'd rather talk to him than my classmates, and being classmates is supposed to be the strongest bond a shellperson can have!" Supposed to be—that was the trick, wasn't it? There was very little in her life that had happened the way it was supposed to. At this point, she should have been entering advanced studies under the auspices of the Institute—not working for it. She should have been a softie—not a shellperson.
But you didn't deal with life by dwelling on what "should" have happened. You handled it by making the best out of what had happened.
"Well, Tia, you spent the first seven of your most formative years as a softperson," Kenny pointed out gently. His next words echoed her own earlier thoughts. "You never thought you'd wind up in a shell, where your classmates never knew anything but their shells and their teachers. Just like when a chick hatches—what it imprints on is what it's going to fall in love with,"
"I—I didn't say I was in love," she stammered, suddenly alarmed.
Kenny held his peace. He simply stared at her column with a look she remembered all too well. The one that said she wasn't entirely telling the truth, and he knew it.
"Well—maybe a little," she admitted, in a very soft voice. "But—it's not like I was another softie—"
"You can love a friend, you know," Kenny pointed out. "That's been acknowledged for centuries—even among stuffy shellperson Counselors. Remember your Greek philosophers—they felt there were three kinds of love, and only one of them had anything to do with the body. Eros, filios, and agape."
"Sexual, brotherly, and religious," she translated, feeling a little better. "Well, okay. Filios, then."
"Lars translates them as 'love involving the body,' 'love involving the mind,' and 'love involving the soul.' That's even more apt in your case," Kenny said comfortably. "Both filios and agape apply here."
"I guess you're right," she said, feeling sheepish.
"Tia, my dear," Kenny said, without a hint of patronization, "there is nothing wrong with saying that you love your brawn—the first words you transmitted to me from your new shell, in case you've forgotten, were 'Doctor Kenny, I love you.' Frankly, I'm a lot happier hearing this from you than something 'appropriate.' "
"Like what?" she asked curiously.
"Hmm. Like this." He raised his voice an octave. "Well, Doctor Kennet," he said primly, "I'm quite pleased with the performance of my brawn Alexander. I believe we can work well together. Our teamwork was quite acceptable on this last assignment."
"You sound like Kari, exactly like Kari." She laughed. "Yes, but imagine trying to have this conversation with one of my BB Counselors!"
He screwed up his face and flung up his hands. "Oh, horrors!" he exclaimed, his expression matching the outrage in his voice. "How could you confess to feeling anything? AH-One-Oh-Three-Three, I am going to have to report you for instability!"
"Precisely," she replied, sobering. "Sometimes I think they just want us to be superior sorts of AIs. Self-aware and self-motivating, but someone get out a scalpel and excise the feeling part before you pop them in their shells."
"There's a fine line they have to tread, dear," he told her, just as soberly. "Your classmates lack something you had—the physical nurturing of a parent. They never touched anything; they've never known anything but a very artificial environment. They don't really understand emotions, because they've never been allowed to experience them or even see them near at hand. I don't think there's any question in my mind what that means, when they first come out into the real world of us softies. It means they literally enter a world as foreign and incomprehensible as any alien culture. In some ways, it would be better if they all entered professions where they never had to deal with humans one-on-one."
"Then why—" She picked her words with care. "Why don't they put adults into shells?"
"Because adults—even children—often can't adapt to the fact that their bodies don't work anymore, and that—as you pointed out yourself—they will never have that human touch again." He sighed. "I've seen plenty of that in my time, too. You are an exception, my love. But you always have been special. Outstandingly flexible, adaptable." He sat back in his chair and thought; she didn't interrupt him. "Tia, there are things that I don't agree with in the way the shellperson training program is run. But you're out of the training area now and into the real world. You'll find that even the Counselors can have an entirely different attitude out here. They're ready to accept what works, not just what's in the rule books."
She paused a moment before replying. "Kenny, what do I do if—things creep over into eros? I mean, I'm not going to crack my column or anything, but . . ."
"Helva," Kenny said succinctly. "Think of Helva. She and her brawn had a romance that still has power over the rest of known space. If it happens, Tia, let it happen. If it doesn't, don't mourn over it. Enjoy the fact that your brawn is your very best friend; that's the way it's supposed to be, after all. I have faith in your sense and sensibility; I always have. You'll be fine." He coughed a little. "As it—ah—happens, I have a bit of fellow-feeling for you. Anna and I have gotten to be something of an item."
"Really?" She didn't even try to modulate the glee out of her voice. "It's about time! What did she do, tip your chair over to slow you down and seduce you on the spot?"
"That's just about word for word what Lars said," Kenny replied, blushing furiously. "Except that he added a few other pointed remarks."
"I can imagine." She giggled. Lars was over two centuries old, and he had seen a great deal in that time. Every kind of drama a sentient was capable of, in fact—he was the chief overseer of one of the largest hospital stations in Central Systems. If there was ever a place for life-and-death drama, a hospital station was it—as holo-makers across the galaxy knew. From the smallest incident to the gravest, Lars had witnessed—and sometimes participated in—all of it.
He had been in charge of the Pride of Albion since it was built—he had been built into it. He would never leave, and never wanted to. Cynical, brilliant—with an unexpectedly kind heart. That was Lars. . . .
He could be the gentlest person, soft- or shell-, that Tia had ever met. Though he never missed an opportunity to jab one of his softperson colleagues with his sharp wit.
"But Kenny—" She hesitated, eaten alive with curiosity, but unsure how far she could push. "Kenny, how nosy can I be about you and Anna?"
"Tia, I know everything there is to know about you, from your normal heart rate to the exact composition of the chemicals in your blood when you're under stress. My doctor knows the same about me. We're both used to being poked and prodded—" he paused "—and you are my very dear friend. If there is something you are really curious about, please, go ahead and ask." His eyes twinkled. "But don't expect me to tell you about the birds and the bees."
"You're—when we first met, you called yourself a 'medico on the half-shell.' You're half machine. How does Anna—feel about that?" If she could have blushed, she would have, she felt so intrusive.
He didn't seem to feel that she was intruding, however. "Hmm, good questions. The answer, my dear, is one that I am afraid can't apply to you. I'm only 'half machine' when I'm strapped in. When I'm not in my chair, I'm—an imperfect, but entirely human creature." He smiled.
"So it's like comparing rocks to bonbons." That was something she hadn't anticipated. "Or water to sheet-metal."
"Good comparisons. You're not the first to ask these questions, by the way. So don't think you're unique in being curious." He stretched and grinned. "Anna and I are doing a lot of—hmm—personal-relations counseling of my other handicapped patients."
"At least I'm not some kind of—would-be voyeur." That was nice to know.
"You, how
ever, were and are in an entirely different boat than my other patients," he warned. "What applies to them does not apply to you." He shook his head. "I'm going to give this to you straight and without softening. You have no working nerves, sensory or motor control, below your neck. And from what I've seen, there was some further damage to the autonomic system as well before we stabilized you. What with the mods they made to you when you went into the shell, you're dependent on life-support now. I don't think you could survive outside your shell—I know you wouldn't be happy."
"Oh. All right." In a way, she was both disappointed and relieved. Relieved that it was one more factor she wouldn't have to consider in her ongoing partnership. Disappointed—well, not that much. She hadn't really thought there would ever be any way to reverse the path that had brought her into her column.
"I did bring some records of the things I've been working on to show you—devices that are helping out some of our involuntary amputees. I thought you'd be interested, just on an academic basis." He slipped a datahedron into her reader, and she brought up the display on her central screen. "This young lady was a professional dancer—she was trapped under several tons of masonry after an earthquake. By the time medics got to her, the entire limb had suffered cell-death. There was no saving it."
The video portion of the clip showed a lovely young lady in leotards and tights trying out what looked like a normal leg—except that it moved very stiffly.
"The problem with the artificial limbs we've been giving amputees is that while we've fixed most of the weight and movement problems, they're still completely useless for someone like a dancer, who relies on sensory input to tell her whether or nor her foot is in the right position." Kenny smiled fondly as he watched the girl on the screen. "That's Lila within a few minutes of having the leg installed. At the hip, may I add. The next clip will be three weeks later, then three months."
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