Shockball

by S. L. Viehl

  I quickened my pace and we made it back to Medical in record time. I went immediately to the box of books I’d been reading and started digging through the volumes.

  “Bacterial Metabolism Studies. Epidemiology in North America. Synthetic and Natural Antibodies.” I took a few more out and set them all to one side. “It had to be in one of these.”

  I carried the pile of books over to the exam table. They were charming to look at, but heavy. Then I grabbed the first one and skimmed through the pages.

  Reever peered down at it. “Wendell’s books?”

  “Uh-huh.” I tucked a piece of loose hair behind my ear and flipped through most of the first chapter. “I knew I’d seen that bug somewhere before. It was in one of these. I’m sure of it.”

  It took about three hours to find the photographic illustration of the spirochete. Unfortunately the wood-pulp page was crumbling, and it was impossible to make out the name of the bacteria in the caption or the text. Nor did the photograph exactly match the bacteria I was seeing in the outcasts’ blood samples.

  “Not identical, but close. They have to be related.”

  I read what was left of the page, which detailed the antiquated methods of dealing with outbreaks of sexually transmitted diseases. Latex prophylactics. Irregular blood screens. Even abstinence was recommended as an effective method of control.

  “Abstinence?” I snorted. “No wonder someone invented cascade innoculants.”

  Despite that rather criminal naivete, the doctors had been intelligent enough to realize that STDs were passed through body fluid exchanges. My patients had been both male and female. It was reasonable to assume my spirochete had been transmitted the same way.

  I flipped through another half dozen pages, until I found the description of the tests performed to identify the various kinds of STDs. One of them, the rapid plasma reagin series, remained in use by a few remote clinics who couldn’t support a regular laboratory array. I’d seen it done in a village in Asia once.

  Working off the hope that the test could prove helpful, I ran the RPR series on the blood sample. Results returned a host of antibodies responding to the bacterial invasion. These particular antibodies were ones I did recognize.

  “Mother of All Houses.” I stepped back from the scope.

  “What is it?”

  “It can’t be.” I ran a fluorescent treponemal antibody absorption test anyway. It confirmed the RPR’s positive screening.

  I went over to the unoccupied treatment table and sat down on the edge, trying to understand what I’d just determined. I knew exactly what the spirochete was now. Any first-year medtech student who’d paid attention during their history classes would have recognized it.

  At the tame time, it wasn’t possible. It couldn’t exist.

  “Cherijo?” All this time, Reever had been sitting quietly off in the corner, watching me. “Did you find something?”

  “Yeah. I found treponema pallidum.” I looked at Reever, then shook my head. “It’s right over there, under the scope. I don’t believe it, but it’s there.”

  Reever went over to the scope to have a look. “Treponema pallidum is the name of this disease?”

  “It’s the name of a bacterium that caused a disease. One that was eradicated from Terra during the twenty-second century.” When he glanced my way, I gestured at the scope. “What you’re looking at, Reever, doesn’t exist.” And, with the slight change in its appearance, may have mutated.

  “It seems very active for a nonexistent microorganism.”

  I went to the med supply containers and checked my stores. I had enough penicillin to deal with the outbreak, as long as it was confined to those dozen hybrids. I’d need to get my hands on doxycycline or tetracycline now; it was possible some of the patients would have stronger allergic reactions to the treatment, which would take about two weeks. As long as the mutation didn’t mean the bacterium was antibiotic resistant.

  “How contagious is it?”

  “Remember the Core?”

  He lifted his head from the magnifier. “That bad.”

  “Almost.”

  I recalled what I knew about the archaic disease. The symptoms differed from one person to the next; the bacteria often created “carriers” who showed little sign of the infection, but were highly contagious. Others would come down with severe symptoms almost at once. If the outcasts had been infected and active with any other member of the tribe before being exiled to that shack, this bug would spread like wildfire.

  “I have to find a way to run tests on everyone in the tribe.”

  Reever sat down beside me. “This infection—is it terminal? Will you need a quarantine?”

  “No, it isn’t fatal, as long as we catch it in the primary and secondary stages. As for a quarantine”—I laughed once—”the only way I can do that is to keep everyone from having sex, which, given Rico’s attitude and the tribe’s superstitions, is also highly unlikely.”

  He picked up the book I’d been reading. “Urethritis. AIDS. Gonorrhoea. Herpes Simplex. What are they?”

  “STDs. See there”—I pointed to a section in the text—”they used to call them ‘venereal diseases.”’

  “Which one of these does treponema pallidum cause?”

  “Syphilis.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Desperate Bargain

  My worries about mutation proved to be unjustified. Most of the hybrids showed an immediate response to penicillin therapy, and after fourteen days, the outcasts’ blood tested negative for syphilis on the RPR. That left only the drug addiction to deal with.

  Wendell, I learned, had been selling them barbiturates for weeks. The mild opiate I gave them only took the edge off the worst of the withdrawal symptoms. Gradually they stopped having the tremors and night sweats, but the psychological dependency was still presenting a problem.

  Reever came in very handy in that department.

  He accompanied me on all my surreptitious visits to the sewer shack, and started talking with the patients waiting for me to examine them. He used their native language, and at first I was too busy to adjust my wristcom to pick up whatever it was he said. Most of his conversations remained one-sided; the hybrids were good at ignoring people they didn’t like.

  Slowly, some of the outcasts started responding to Reever. First they swore at him. Then they pleaded.

  Slowly, they talked, and finally, they listened.

  By the beginning of the third week, the hybrids began gathering in a circle with Reever as soon as we arrived. I walked around scanning them from behind while he talked. He used a lot of hand gestures, and sometimes spoke without stopping for a good hour.

  One day he made everyone laugh. That was when I adjusted my wristcom and started listening in.

  He was telling them all about our adventures. Stories that came from our captivity on Catopsa, the systems we had traveled through on the Sunlace, and the devastating plague on K-2.

  I liked listening to Reever. I never realized how differently he had experienced everything, until he described the first time we met.

  “I had finished my work translating for the morning’s new arrivals, and went to the Training Center to see an old friend. Ana Hansen, a woman I respect and worked with, came to see my friend as well. With Ana was this very small Terran. If it had not been for the physician’s tunic she wore, I would have thought her a child. I could not stop looking at her.”

  One of the outcasts eyed me skeptically. “Because of her beauty, Nilch’i?”

  “No, only because she was the smallest Terran I had ever seen.”

  Everyone looked at me then, and a couple of the women giggled.

  I sniffed. “I’m not that small.”

  “As she walked by me, I felt an immediate connection to her. As if she were a telepath, like me, reaching out to me. Then a vision came to me. A vision that would come true.”

  Visions were very important to Native Americans, and the Night Horse outcasts proved no different
. They leaned forward and made gestures with their hands for him to continue the story, eager to hear all about Reever’s vision.

  I remembered that. Reever, standing beneath a gnorra tree, surrounded by white light. Holding a woman’s wrists in his hands, in front of his face. Although I hadn’t realized it at the time, they were my own wrists….

  “Ana introduced her to my old friend. Their meeting was not congenial.”

  That was an understatement. Lisette Dubois had been six feet tall, blond, beautiful—and completely hostile. “It wasn’t my fault she didn’t like me.”

  Reever glanced at me. “Lisette was always self-conscious about her height. Small, feminine women intimidated her.”

  “Feminine? Me?”

  “I realized I had better defuse the situation, so I interrupted the meeting.”

  “You asked Ana if the Council had instituted a Health Board,” I said.

  “It was a joke.”

  “You have a terrible sense of humor. No one ever gets it.”

  He went back to his story. “Ana introduced us, and told me that Cherijo was a newly transferred physician. Lisette wanted me to leave, but I thought I had better find out more about this strange Terran woman.”

  I snorted. “You asked me when I planned to leave, if I remember correctly. You also asked if I was Asian, and said a couple other rude things.”

  “No more than you did. You acted very secretive.” To the outcasts, he said, “She considers her maternal ancestry to be of little value.”

  Everyone gave me a condemning look. The Night Horse, like the Navajo, were a matriarchal society.

  “Hey, I didn’t know, okay?” I gestured toward my husband. “Then he said on some planet in a system two light-years away from that one, I’d be ritually sacrificed for having blue eyes.”

  “Is this true, Reever?”

  “Quite true. I meant it as a warning—to remind her that she was a stranger on an alien world.”

  “He’s so helpful that way,” I said.

  “Before I left the Trading Center, I looked back at her. That was when I had my second vision.”

  I perked up at that. “What second vision?”

  He reached over and traced the line of silver in my hair. “Of watching you, with this streak in your hair, and our child in your arms.”

  “Nice.” Boy, that one hurt. “I hate to break this up, but story time is over. We’d better get back before we’re missed.”

  The men clamored for more. Then one of the women touched my stomach.

  “Changing Woman brought forth the People from her own body. Yours will be a very special child, loved by all, sought by many.”

  I didn’t say a word; I just nodded and walked out.

  We weren’t as lucky as we had been in the past, for Milass was waiting at the alcove with a couple of the hybrid players I’d worked on.

  “Where have you been, woman?” He pushed me into a wall. “These men are hurt and in need.”

  Reever rolled in front of me before I could stop him, and shoved Milass back. “Keep your hands off her.”

  Milass jerked a blade from his belt. “You should have killed me when you had the chance, whiteskin.”

  “No!” I grabbed Reever’s arm, but he shook me off. “You can’t fight him. Not in your condition.”

  “I will not fight him.” Reever made it sound like he intended a lot worse.

  “Come then, what do you wait for? Your woman’s permission?”

  I noticed the players watching both men. “Stop him, Or I won’t lift a finger to help any of you again.”

  “Secondario.” One of them was brave enough to step forward. “We are needed in the arena.”

  The little twerp ignored him. “She will do as she’s told.”

  That’s when Hawk limped into the middle of things. “Milass. There is no need for violence. He protects his woman. It is the way. Let her treat the players’ wounds now.”

  For a tense couple of seconds, nobody moved. Then Milass sheathed his knife. Reever didn’t back down, but he didn’t lunge, either. The chief’s secondario said something really vile and stalked off.

  I heaved a sigh of relief. “I’m starting to like this way thing.” When Hawk would have kept going down the tunnel, I blocked his path. “Oh, no you don’t. I’ll need a hand with this.”

  Both of the hybrids had just returned from a shock-ball match; both were sporting multiple contusions, minor stress fractures in their forearms and calves, and localized thrombosis. I didn’t figure out why until I saw the burns on their hands and feet.

  “You guys got a couple of penalties, right?” One of them nodded, and I swore. “Testosterone. It should be outlawed. Hawk, I need two infusers, fifty milligrams sodium bicarb, twenty-five grams mamutanol per liter, line-push.”

  Reever came over to watch as I finished the scans, supervised the infuser applications and showed Hawk how to start cleaning the worst of the gashes. “What do hormones have to do with these injuries?”

  “You men have too many of them. Here, Duncan, you help us with these splints. Hawk, if I don’t get some decent bonesetters soon, I’m going to break your legs.”

  A couple of hours later, Hawk asked if he could look over their charts as I was hooking Reever up to the dialysis rig.

  “Why? Think I messed up?”

  “No. I am only curious.”

  “Curiosity is good.” I handed him the charts. “Would have been nice if you’d helped me when Rico cut Wendell’s throat open.”

  “I cannot go against my chief.” He gave me a faintly guilty look. “No matter how much I wish to.”

  I went over to the container and started my weekly inventory of supplies. I had to keep a close eye on the antibiotics stock. As it was, I’d used nearly a quarter of it treating the hybrids. Another thing to bug Hawk about.

  “Patcher, I don’t understand.” He showed me one of the charts. “You put here the fractures were caused by muscle contractions. Bones cannot be broken by muscles.”

  “Sure, they can.” I counted my syrinpresses and frowned; one was gone. “Alternating current passing through the body cycles, and with each cycle, the muscles contract. If you’ve got voltage higher than one kilowatt, and sufficient duration, the jolts can fracture every bone in your body. We won’t even discuss distal soft-tissue ischemia, entry- and exit-point thermal injuries, spinal cord damage, rhabdomyolysis, myoglobinuria, cardiac and pulmonary arrest. Both your players were hit five or six times, and at least once with maximum jolts.”

  “I see.” Looking even more bewildered, he went back to studying the charts.

  Reever looked interested, too. “It sounds as if they were almost electrocuted.”

  “They almost were.” I recalled Reever hadn’t spent much time on Terra. “These players were all penalized during the game. The sphere they use to score points is controlled by a computer system, which monitors the plays. Whoever commits an illegal motion while in contact with it triggers the computer to register a penalty. The player then gets a nice, automatic bio-electrical shock.”

  “It sounds barbaric.”

  “Yeah, but it packs the arenas, I’m told.”

  “I was at the game,” Hawk said suddenly. “I saw what happened to them. They knew what they were doing.”

  “Which makes them idiots, as well as injured,” I said.

  Hawk shrugged. “The Night Horse won.”

  Damn men and their damn stupid games. “The Night Horse are going to end up crispy little piles of ash if they keep getting that many penalties per man.”

  “I will so inform the chief,” Hawk said, then departed without another word.

  Two weeks passed without incident, during which I got a lot of work done. I continued follow-up maintenance on the hybrid players, finished the last of the antibiotic therapy with the outcasts, and even got Juliet fattened up a bit.

  I also spent considerable time trying to figure out how to get out of Leyaneyaniteh. Kegide willingly escorted m
e around the outer tunnels, but he refused to disarm any other traps or proximity fields. He didn’t understand any of my arguments as to why he should help me and Reever escape, so there was nothing I could do about that.

  Joseph had intensified his efforts to find us, and we often heard distant, muffled sounds of glidetrucks taking off and landing on the surface. The village had been searched again, according to Hawk, and this time the inhabitants questioned at length.

  I couldn’t worry about Joe. My immediate problem was Reever’s kidney, which had now completely shut down. The dialysis rig was proving only about eighty-percent effective, so he became more tired and weaker as the days passed. The toxic buildup in his blood was inevitable. So was the end of my patience.

  “If I could just take you to an organ transplant center for a couple of hours, I could fix this.” I sat down by the table where he lay quietly watching the machine finish its three-hour cycle. It was late, but I preferred to do his dialysis at night, while the tribe slept, so we wouldn’t be interrupted. “A donor bank, a surgical suite, and a nurse. That’s all I’d need.”

  “Don’t get upset. You’ve done all you can.”

  I laughed, once. “Oh, sure. I’m the creation of the man who pioneered organ transplantation research in this century, and I can’t … even—Wait a minute.” I got up and looked at the vault of stone above us. “The lab. All we have to do is get on the subway and go back to the lab.”

  “You want to go back to The Grey Veils?”

  “Yeah.” To save his life, I had to do something he’d never agree to. Which meant inventing a cover plan he’d buy. “I must be brain dead, why didn’t I think of it before? Joe has an entire wall of cloned organs, growing on artificial scaffolds.”

  “He may not have one that is a tissue match.”

  He’d picked up a little too much medical knowledge, hanging around me. “No problem. I’ll just get the equipment I need and bring it back here so I can clone one for you myself.”

  “Do you believe the Night Horse chief or your creator will allow you to access the facility and help yourself?”

  “I don’t tell Rico, and we don’t let Joe catch us. I can get us into the mansion undetected, and get what I need.” He didn’t know I could never transport all the tech necessary to clone his kidney, even with ten subway systems running. “All I have to do is convince Kegide to guide us back there.”