Stardoc

by S. L. Viehl

  “Oh, Ana.” I felt sick myself. “Maybe this thing with Reever will work. Try not to be afraid.”

  “I’m not, not really. After Elars died, my life didn’t seem very important. I didn’t give up, but I did come to terms with death.” She gazed out at the remnants of the colony, tears streaming down her face.

  “Then, why are you crying?”

  “I was one of the first transfers here on K-2. We had so many plans for this world. So many dreams. All gone, destroyed now.”

  “Don’t give up. Not yet.”

  We arrived back at the Isolation Facility, where the waiting cases had nearly doubled. There must have been close to a thousand colonists waiting for treatment. Some were still ambulatory, but most were sitting or lying on the ground. All were in some form of respiratory distress.

  Ana faced the reality of the epidemic now without expression. While I treated her laceration, the color slowly leeched from her skin. By the time I was finished, her face was almost as white as the dressing I put on her cheek.

  “Hey.” I took her hand in mine, gave it a reassuring squeeze. “They’re still alive. There’s still hope.”

  Her voice reflected the strain. “Take me to Duncan, please.”

  She accompanied me through the makeshift hospital, back to where the comatose or dying were segregated. Each moan or cough seemed to make her cringe, and I noticed she kept her eyes carefully averted from the faces of the suffering. I put my arm around her. For an empath, I thought, this must be hell.

  We found Reever still under sedation. I left her with him long enough to check on Kao and assure his condition wasn’t deteriorating.

  “A nurse told me you were summoned by the Council,” Kao said after I finished my scan. The readings reflected no sign of the contagion, but there was a slight drop in his vital signs. Maybe he’d just woken up. “What did they want with you?”

  I was tempted to tell him about the whole debacle, but there had been too many weapons pointed at me today. Kao would be furious and Jorenian enough to try to hunt down the responsible parties. Plus I had to get back to Ana and Reever. “Nothing important. The usual bureaucratic nonsense.” With one hand I brushed the thick black hair away from his eyes. “I’ll be back to see you later. Get some rest.”

  When I returned to Reever’s cot, I found Ana kneeling beside him, her hands pressed to the sides of his face.

  “Physical contact helps Duncan to communicate,” she said. I didn’t tell her I already knew that from personal experience. She concentrated for a moment, then shook her head. “There’s something wrong. I can’t reach him.”

  “It’s no use.” I touched her shoulder. “We’ll have to revive him, Ana.”

  She looked down at her hands on Reever’s face, then back up at me. Something vital flared into her gaze. “Wait. I have an idea. Give me your hand.” She joined it to Reever’s and placed hers on top of both. “He won’t respond to me, but I think I can act as a conduit for you. Duncan discussed it with me once, a technique used to assist a nonverbal species. You may be able to reach him through me.”

  “He’s sedated,” I said as I shook my head. “It’s not possible.”

  “If we do this while he’s unconscious, will it prevent another seizure?” I nodded. “Duncan has . . . unusual abilities.”

  “Ana, he’s on continuous sedation. Whatever abilities he has are fast asleep.”

  “We have to try.”

  “All right.” It was a last-ditch effort, but at least it was one that wouldn’t kill him. Another seizure would. “Tell me what to do.”

  Her hand tightened over mine and Reever’s. “Call to him in your mind, Joey. Call to him as you would a lover.” I closed my eyes, thinking of Kao. “No,” she said. “Call to Duncan.”

  I tried. It was difficult to shut out the sounds of the dying around me. I thought of the few times Reever had touched me, linked with me, and tried to summon that same sensation.

  Reever. Come to me, Reever, I’m waiting. We need you. I need you.

  Something slowly seeped into me, coalesced, became a presence. A semblance of Duncan Reever masked it, but I knew it wasn’t him.

  “Something else,” I said. Ana made an encouraging sound, and I tried to intensify the connection by concentrating. “Not Reever.”

  I was plunged into a liquid, moving darkness. All around me, I felt not one presence, but a multitude. Hundreds, thousands, even millions.

  Who are you?

  We are the Core. We are the Core.

  Distinct, emotionless, unified. They reached into my mind and solidified the link between us. I saw. I understood. The Core had infiltrated Reever’s mind. Controlled it. The seizures came when he had resisted them.

  Pain crashed over me as a million voices screamed. You! Murderer! I fought to keep from sliding into darkness, staggered by the psychic blast. At a very great distance, I heard Ana’s voice.

  “Cherijo. End the link. Let go of him.”

  “No, Ana,” I heard myself say. “Wait. Wait.” I was in contact with them. I had to make them understand.

  No—I’m a healer—I want to help—I need your help.

  Return us return us return us return us return us return us.

  How? I mentally shouted over the shrieked demands. How can I return you—I don’t understand—help me to return you where?

  The dwellings return us to the dwellings.

  What are the dwellings?

  Existence in the green world home.

  Show me the dwellings, I pleaded. The strain of communicating with them was sapping my energy, I couldn’t keep this up much longer. Show me. I don’t understand.

  Like a light, I was flooded with the memory of the first time Reever linked with me. I stood in the grove where Alun Karas aspirated the sap from the gnorra trees.

  More images came. Alun reporting to the exam room, covered in purple leaves.

  The Engineering site, ringed by more gnorra trees.

  Ecla telling me about her community service allotment—working in the groves. I saw her sneezing as she pruned the trees.

  The orderly who had sneezed at the crash site had been standing next to the trees.

  The trees.

  “Cherijo!”

  I saw it now. The Core weren’t a plantlike life-form; they lived in one. Like fish in a sea, they lived in the weightless environment of liquid resin. The sap from the gnorra trees.

  Here? I pictured one of the trees in my mind.

  The voices roared in my head. The dwellings return us the dwellings there there . . .

  I couldn’t breathe. Something was enveloping me, smothering me. I let go of Reever’s hand, staggered back, falling. I blacked out as the voices died, the images shriveled.

  I woke up flat on my back, staring at the roof of the temporary facility.

  “Cherijo. Hold still,” Ana said. I choked, rolled to my side, and spat out a mouthful of fluid. When she helped me to sit up, I saw I was coated with a thick layer of amber fluid. It soaked me, from my hair to my footgear.

  “It came from the patients.” Ana answered my unspoken question. “Everyone around us began having violent expulsions. All at the same time. It flew out of their orifices toward us, but it never touched me. It just kept pouring over you.”

  She tore away a piece of her tunic and reached out to clean off my face. Reever unexpectedly appeared beside her, and caught her wrist. She gave a small shriek.

  “Don’t wipe it off,” he told her.

  I looked from Reever to Ana. “How?” Before either one of them could answer me, I blacked out again.

  The next time I regained consciousness, Duncan Reever stood over me, Ana beside him. I frowned. He had no right to look so damn healthy.

  “Cherijo.” The administrator smiled her relief.

  I looked around, and saw I was back at the FreeClinic, suspended in a lukewarm solution filling one of the fluid tanks used to treat aquatics. I was also stark naked.

  “Don’t move,”
Reever said.

  “I’m not exactly in the mood for a swim,” I said. “Would one of you mind telling me what’s happened?”

  “The contagion has stopped spreading since your contact with the Core. No new cases.” Ana sighed. “The epidemic is over.”

  The Core. I recalled everything now. “Not for long. I’ve got to get out of here.” I felt disoriented, my limbs rubbery. “Give me a hand, Duncan.”

  “Try not to disturb the fluid,” he said as he leaned over. I saw how he averted his eyes as he reached for me. It was a little late for him to be worried about my modesty.

  “Try not to drop me.”

  Reever carefully lifted me out. Once I was standing, Ana helped me dry off while Reever sealed the tank.

  Puzzled, I asked, “What are you doing that for?”

  “To preserve the Core that are still alive. The tank will have to be transported and drained in the groves.”

  “I’d love to hear an explanation of that, but it has to wait.” I shivered and looked around me. “I need clothes, and then I need to talk to whatever is left of Colonial Security.”

  “We’ve already contacted them. They’ve combined forces with the Militia and are waiting for you outside.”

  Ana found a spare orderly’s tunic, and I pulled it on. My damp hair clinging to me, I strode out of the treatment room. Reever and Ana followed. The men and women waiting outside looked tired, filthy, and at the end of their reserves.

  “I’m Dr. Grey Veil,” I said, facing the assembly. I was doing my imitation of Joseph Grey Veil, and that got me their full attention. I bet none of them noticed I was short, wet, or barefoot. “I’ve established contact with the pathogen. It’s not a disease. It’s made up of microscopic sentient life-forms who are native to this planet.”

  Reactions ranged from disbelief to outrage.

  “There isn’t time to debate this. We have to work fast, and I need your help.” I told myself that rumbling sound they were making was unified agreement. “They call themselves the Core, they live in the resin of the gnorra trees, and they’d like to go home. We’re going to help them.”

  “We are?” a voice asked.

  “The only way we can do this is to move the infected patients to the Botanical Project. We’ll place them in close proximity to the trees. The Core will do the rest.”

  “Transporting them will be a nightmare,” someone else said.

  “This isn’t going to work,” a third voice joined in. “We’re wasting our time!”

  I glared in that direction. “If we don’t return the Core, everyone will die. Got it? We removed them from their habitat, we’re going to put them back.”

  “What are you talking about? We didn’t take them out of those trees!” another shouted.

  “We did when we breathed them into our lungs,” I told them. “What the Core has been trying to do is get back out.”

  “You’re saying all we have to do is dump the sick ones under these trees, and they’ll get better?” a reasonable voice asked. “Sounds crazy, Doc.”

  “It’s the only way,” I said. “Are you going to help or not?”

  The officers took a few minutes to discuss the proposal among themselves. Voices raised in anger. Some pushed their way through the group and walked out. The bulk of the force, however, remained. One of the Militia commanders stepped forward.

  “We can arrange to slow-glide some shuttles over to the groves. The problem is what to do about the rioters.”

  “Make an announcement that infected patients are being transported,” Ana said. “That should clear the path.”

  “Better tell them we’ve found a cure, and they can get it at the Botanical Project,” I said. “Make sure you keep enough of your people at the site to prevent any more violence. I’ll coordinate from the Isolation facility.” I gazed around the room. “We can do this. Let’s go.”

  I left Ana behind and made my way toward the waiting transport outside the clinic. Reever silently shadowed me.

  I came to a halt and turned on him. “Is the Core still with you?”

  “No.” He shook his head and came to a stop beside me. “They evacuated my body after your link with them was terminated.”

  So he had no excuse for acting like a jerk now. “Congratulations. Get away from me.” I paused. “Wait a minute. Why did you put me in that immersion tank?”

  “The Core exist in a fluid environment. They can survive for short periods when removed from it, even simulate solid forms, but eventually they die. Oxygen is toxic to them, and they are particularly vulnerable to changes in ambient pressure.”

  Now I saw the final connection. “That’s why you didn’t want me to move. Why they induced pneumonic symptoms in the lungs of each colonist. Not to escape, but to stop them from breathing. To keep from being squashed.”

  “Yes. Cherijo—”

  I saw how he was looking at me, and I wasn’t going to do this. Not here, not now. “Ana will need help with the transmission.”

  “I—” Reever hesitated. I kept my hands clenched but at my sides. “I will see you later,” he said, and turned back.

  Not if I see you first, I thought, and took the transport back to the Isolation facility.

  Once we had the shuttles hovering over the glide path, I escorted the first group of patients to the gnorra groves. We had to carry most of them to the trees, and lay them in litters on the ground.

  I saw a face I recognized, and crouched down next to Lisette Dubois. My scanner read only negligible vital signs. She should have died when they’d taken her off the respirator. Knowing Lisette, I wasn’t surprised to find her alive. The woman’s determination was scary. I picked up her limp hand.

  Nothing happened.

  “No, come on, you bad-tempered witch,” I told her. “Stop giving me a hard time and do it!”

  Lisette’s lips moved. Was she trying to say something? Her fingers twitched, contracted, then clamped down on mine.

  “Lisette?” I patted her cheek. “Lisette? Can you hear me?”

  She took a wheezing breath, letting it burst back out in a violent cough. I rolled her on to her side.

  Clear, amber fluid streamed from her nose and mouth.

  All around us at the same time, patients began to convulse. Seconds later every one of them was coughing, sneezing, or vomiting up the Core fluid. Other patients, incapable of such functions, exuded the resinous substance from whatever open membranes they possessed.

  “Get the patients in recovery position, like this!” I shouted, pointing to Lisette.

  Security trotted around, rolling patients on their sides. The yellow ooze expelled from their bodies collected in pools and sank into the ground.

  “The roots,” someone said in awe. “They must be using them to get back in the trees.”

  Lisette’s eyes opened. She looked up at me, and frowned.

  “Why . . . am I . . . laying here?” Her voice was raspy, her throat swollen from the esophageal tube. “This is . . . how . . . you treat . . . your patients?”

  I laughed. Kissed her on the forehead. Laughed again.

  It worked.

  Every patient I scanned was improving. People were delirious, crying, clutching at each other. Others simply sat, dazed at the near-instantaneous remission.

  Kao Torin was transported with the others, and I went to him as soon as he arrived. Unlike the other patients, he experienced no expulsions. It should have reassured me, but I didn’t like his color.

  “Hey.” I knelt beside him in the dirt. Tired white eyes focused on mine. “Don’t you want to join the party and throw up?”

  “Cherijo.” A big hand groped for mine. “No, I am merely weary. It is good to feel the suns on my face again.”

  Maybe that was why he was so pale. I squeezed his hand. “I’m going to have you moved to Recovery. Work on your tan.”

  We repeated the process over and over. More patients were brought. More yellow stuff came out of them. More of the Core returned to thei
r trees. I stayed on-site, just in case something went wrong. I’d be damned if I was going to go through all this and find out it didn’t work. A number of patients were weakened from tissue damage wrought by the Core, but no one died.

  I loved it when I was right.

  The healthy, Core-free patients were sent to a new Recovery facility that had once been the Botanical Research Building. The FreeClinic doctors were among the first of the patients brought to the groves, and were able to provide follow-up treatment for subsequent patients purged of the Core.

  Dr. Dloh caught me before he left the groves. I never thought getting hugged by a big spider would feel like that.

  I set up a team of orderlies to continue processing and went to help out at the Recovery site. It was there I watched with the other doctors as Ana Hansen made the colony-wide transmission and detailed our work.

  “Attention all inhabitants. We have discovered a cure for the infection. We have discovered a cure. Please attend to this message. It is imperative that you follow these instructions.”

  Dr. Mayer walked up to me and stood in silence as we listened to the rest of the transmission. Then he turned to me. I didn’t know why I’d ever thought his eyes were cold.

  “Good work, Doctor.” That was all he said before he went back to the patients.

  It was enough.

  It should have been simple to restore order after that.

  It wasn’t.

  Hundreds of colonists remained in weakened condition. Tissue damage was the most common complaint. When the Core simulated tissue, it left holes. We spent long hours performing surgery on the worst cases, and setting up the least serious for therapeutic or pharmaceutical treatments.

  Now that they were no longer in danger of dying, the patients went back to being patients. Which meant they complained, argued, and generally gave the medical staff a hard time.

  Rioters unconvinced by the promise of a cure had to be rounded up by Security and Militia forces. Several refused to submit to the cure voluntarily, and had to be forcibly taken to the groves.

  Administrators worked triple shifts, like the medical staff, and the Council was replaced by new members who had endured and survived the contagion.