by Erik Wecks
Once she knew that her own forces would be successful against the virus, Jo started to relax. She watched the progress of the nanites for a couple of minutes longer and then set down her tablet. Jo started to cry. It felt good to help someone.
When she next looked out the window, the young girl was resting comfortably in her mother’s arms, fast asleep. Even from here, Jo could see that her color had greatly improved.
Jo put her visor-cam back on and spoke to Tanith. The Timcree healer took the young girl’s vitals a second time. This time they looked much better; her oxygen levels were still lower than optimal but no longer endangering the girl.
The girl’s mother looked on, eager for any scrap of understanding that Tanith might give her. When she heard that her daughter was no longer in danger, the change that came over her was immediate. Her shoulders sagged, and she began to cry. She hugged the girl to her chest, gently rocking her as she slept.
Then the strangest thing happened. The young mother again glanced at the glass, and her expression changed slightly. It seemed to Jo that fear and loathing slipped in with the palpable relief. The woman shuddered and turned the girl away from the window so that Jo could no longer see her. Jo got the distinct impression that the woman felt as if she had made a deal with the devil.
8
After Dinner
The safe arrival home of Kolas three days later provided a cause for celebration among his clan. Jo shared the communal sense of relief and optimism but for other reasons. She hoped that Kolas’s return might herald a change in her losing battle against the epidemic, and she also longed for a simple conversation in English without all the false starts and dead ends that came with talking to Tanith.
While the women of the clan busied themselves with preparing a meal, Jo was left to sit with the men and share in a bottle of jurang, the anise-flavored drink favored among the Kree.
In the nearby kitchen, Jo could hear the raised voice of Kolas’s partner. It had taken several weeks for Jo to even figure out the woman’s wholly Timcree name, as the clan spoke it so infrequently, preferring instead to use an honorific title that Jo thought meant something like “ma’am.” Zonezah Gehgik remained a mouthful for Jo.
It hadn’t helped Jo’s sense of security that Zonezah appeared to rule in Kolas’s absence. The woman clearly wanted nothing to do with the human interloper in her household. And Jo wasn’t alone in fearing Zonezah. Her reign was a reign of terror. Even Tanith seemed cowed by her.
Jo accepted a glass of jurang and found a seat on the floor among the circle of men. Kolas quickly called her forward to take the chair at his side.
Left without a natural place in the social order of the clan, the best Jo could tell was she was considered some kind of male outsider, not fit for women’s work and not a true Timcree man, either. Yet she also wasn’t fit to fend for herself. It hadn’t taken long for Jo to notice that unless she was bathing or relieving herself, she always had a male escort.
That said, most of the men seemed to be adjusting to her presence. The women would have nothing to do with her, and Jo was surprised to find herself angry at their lack of acceptance. She would have happily made food just to be able to feel less alien and more feminine, and this realization irritated her even further as she recognized in it a complete compromise of some of her core values.
It wasn’t long after the bottle of liquor had been opened that Kolas held court among his men. Items of interest from Korg Haran were discussed, including the machinations of the other clans, as well as the latest news from the market. Through it all ran the bright, strengthening ribbon of the disease.
As far as Jo could tell, the Timcree had little government of any kind—there was certainly no ruling authority who could have given orders to Kolas or any other clan leader. That didn’t mean there weren’t rules, though. The Timcree followed a strict code of conduct, which was one part religion, one part superstition, and one part implicit social contract. Men like Kolas gathered to themselves junior men—and their associated women—to form a household or clan. Within the clan, the head male acted as the lord and master, dispensing justice and favors to all. The Kolas clan seemed to consist of nearly thirty Timcree.
It was only a couple of minutes before Jo found herself and her work to be the center of conversation. There were no reliable numbers for exactly what was happening with the disease among the Timcree, but Jo had a sense that they were rapidly approaching a tipping point where society might begin to fray. Just that morning, Tanith had turned away the first patient from his full ward. The small child ended up abandoned in the corridor outside. He had died there a few hours later, alone and cold.
Tanith explained how he had set up an isolation ward, with Jo behind the window. Kolas seemed impressed or at least curious. He questioned both Tanith and Jo for a long time in Kree and English. Jo didn’t understand everything he said to Tanith, but she did gather that he was, in the end, satisfied with the arrangement. This disturbed Jo greatly, because the current method had no chance at all of creating a cure. If things didn’t change soon, Jo wasn’t sure how much there would be left of Timcree society, even if she did manage to cure the disease.
Jo took a breath and somehow managed to keep most of the emotion out of her voice. She had enough experience with the Timcree now to know that if she wanted to be taken seriously, she needed to avoid all hint of agitation as she spoke.
“Listen, Commander,” she said, using Kolas’s title, “while I appreciate that Tanith has been so resourceful in finding a way to use my skills in the best way possible, I do not believe that his preparations will be adequate. This disease does not worry about besh.” At the word, several of the surrounding Timcree perked up. “It kills no matter if you have guilt or not. It doesn’t care.”
Kolas listened carefully, his jaw working a little as he chewed on her statement. “How would you propose that we change the arrangement to make it more effective, Internist Josephine Lutnear?”
“At the very least, I need blood samples and tissue samples, if I can get them. I need to see the bodies of dead Kree so that my lab and I can find out what exactly is killing them.”
The air around Jo suddenly felt electric. She noticed that Kolas had turned an even more pale shade of gray. When she made the request, she knew that she would be pushing past the safe ground that guided Timcree life on a day-to-day basis, but of all the Timcree, Kolas was the one to take the risks. He was the one who had anticipated the spread of the disease and wanted to heal it despite the besh of having a Gravlander on Korg Haran, and the outbreak was at a point that she had to ask.
Having said her piece, Jo tried to assess the damage done. Other than his slight change in complexion, Kolas’s face remained as unyieldingly inscrutable as ever. Tanith looked energized. He held his shoulders straight and sat upright. Jo hoped that he wouldn’t take her words to his clan leader as some kind of affront, but there was no way to know.
The other Timcree sensed the tension. It was one of these—one who she doubted understood a word that she’d said—who decided to speak his mind to Kolas, but he did so in Kree so rapid that Jo wasn’t able to understand anything but words here or there. She did catch the term hize sprinkled liberally throughout his tirade—a term that most of Kolas’s clan didn’t use, at least in her presence.
Kolas raised his hand, quieting the room. Turning to Jo, he said calmly, “These are things that I cannot do. You must understand that we cannot give any part of our bodies to a Gravlander. It would be a breach of all that we hold sacred.”
Jo nodded her submission. “I understand the fear. I truly do, but know this, Commander Kolas, without a change, there may be no Korg Haran for you to come home to next time.”
Kolas spoke calmly, but there was a firmness in his voice that Jo had not heard previously. It reminded her of some of the Athenian court ceremonies she had watched back on Athena as a child. “We will speak no more on this matter right now, Jo. We will discuss it further later.”
With that, he let his hand drop, and Jo recognized that the matter had come to an end.
An hour or so later, Jo sat at a rather lavish meal by Timcree standards. There was a synthetic meat, more jurang, and actual green vegetables to go alongside the usual nutriment paste.
Jo was seated to Kolas’s right, in the position of honor. While Tanith—who would have normally occupied Jo’s seat—sat on Kolas’s left. She looked down at her plate to find a portion almost twice as large as any other, including Kolas’s. Even in Kolas’s well-fed clan, she knew that there were those who occasionally went hungry. Jo felt helpless and frustrated.
It had taken some time for her to realize that the attention wasn’t meant to welcome her into the clan or thank her for her service. It all functioned to keep her separate from the tribe. She remained a guest here at the good pleasure of the lord and master. Every time they served her food, they reminded her of her status.
Large portions at meals weren’t the only way in which the Kolas clan marked her as different. The whole clan plied her with gifts. Tanith had moved out of his quarters and given them to her the day after her arrival. At first, the room felt small to Jo, but then she saw the spaces others inhabited, and she recognized it as quite large by comparison.
Tanith also insisted on paying for his English lessons and medical training. At first Jo hadn’t objected because of her conversation with Kolas about Timcree taboos. A gift from a Gravlander brought with it a curse of dependence on the outsider, a taboo the Timcree couldn’t accept, so it made sense that Tanith would feel obligated to make at least a token payment. However, as the payments piled up on a daily basis, Jo knew that she was taking far more than was fair, considering the poor circumstances of the Timcree’s existence. Once she had tried to object. Leaving his payment behind, Tanith had actually stormed out of her quarters and not come back until the next morning, at which point the event seemed totally forgotten. Jo didn’t make that mistake again.
It seemed no matter what she did, the Timcree were determined to treat her as an outsider, and as far as she could see, nothing she had done thus far had even made a dent in that status.
They were only a few bites into the meal—the women were just sitting down—when the airlock door to the Kolas household sprang open without warning. Out of it stepped a man carrying a small child that Jo recognized to be the girl that she had successfully treated this week. The girl lay limply in the arms of her father, her skin a deep shade of death, her head waddling from side to side. She had clearly passed away some time ago.
Jo’s heart seemed to slow and beat its impotent rage against her ribs. She felt her eyes turn warm and blur. Like a volcano rumbling to life, the despair in her soul awoke and left the comfortable corner where she had placed it.
Looking at Jo, the man screamed something that she couldn’t understand, but he addressed her as Gravlander hize. He was not all that far away, as Jo happened to be sitting closest to the door. Even from this distance, Jo could smell the jurang. The shouting was as shocking in a Timcree context as was the fact that the man was foaming from the corner of his mouth.
Jo stood. She wanted to run to the child, and then her mind made sense of some of the man’s slurred Timcree speech. “Hize … killed … girl, Kolas. She … answer … Your whole clan … answer for … death.”
Tanith stood. Kolas gently gestured toward Jo. Tanith moved to stand between her and the distraught father and put a hand on Jo’s shoulder. “Come, Meeta,” he said.
Seeing the murder in the raving father’s eyes, Jo didn’t object this time. She let herself be led away to her quarters.
When alone, Jo locked her door. She growled a little, banging her forearms against the metal. Her stomach clenched. Tears dribbled down her cheeks. Her shoulders shook beneath the weight of her silent sobs. Every impulse in her body wanted to move her toward the white case where she had hidden the scalpel from herself. Yet she stood still, leaning against the tide, gritting her teeth.
There’s no way I can treat the Timcree like this. They’re all going to die before I find out what’s wrong with them. I have to get out of here before this gets ugly.
Jo turned her back on the door and flopped onto her bed. She gripped the covers, trying to force herself to sit completely still.
Then, as if a will greater than her own suddenly controlled her body, Jo found herself getting up and moving to the medical case.
A couple of hours later, Jo lay on her stomach on her bed. She had gone only two rounds with the scalpel this time before she quit. Jo tried to think of it as progress, but she really couldn’t see it that way. Her heart physically hurt in her chest. She’d cried herself out a while ago and now lay still, unable to sleep, too unsure of what she might do if she moved.
Outside, all was quiet. A couple of times at the beginning, she thought she could hear distant voices, which would have been remarkable because it would have meant that the Timcree—or at least some of them—were shouting, but that had been a while ago.
Jo sighed and rolled over until she could reach down to the end of the bed. With one hand, she pinned open a paper copy of a novel written in Kree that she had been trying to read. With the other, she attempted to flip through Iglishes/Kree Wortendar Puch, trying to sort through another Kree preposition. Nothing seemed to make sense. It could mean upon or from, depending on the context. It was all too frustrating for her despairing mind. Closing the books almost as soon as she opened them, Jo closed her eyes.
She was startled awake sometime later by the sound of someone knocking on her door. Her eyes opened and she lay there, unsure if it had been a dream or reality.
The knock came again, and she sat up. Her mind still foggy from her careworn sleep, she almost called out for the Timcree to enter, but then remembered that she had locked the door. Picking up her ugly self-punishment device, she placed it back in the case and shut the lid.
Jo rubbed her forehead. “Coming.”
She opened the door and found herself facing Kolas, who stepped past her into the room without speaking. He gestured for her to close the door.
Jo complied and then stepped toward her reserved patron.
Still quiet, Kolas unzipped one of the pockets on his jumpsuit and pulled out a vial filled with bright red blood. He held the bottom end of the vial toward Jo.
Jo reached out and took it, unwilling to be the first to speak.
Kolas shifted backward, as if standing too near her or the vial might be dangerous.
Jo noted the tight set of his jaw, and although he didn’t speak, he also didn’t move to leave the room.
Jo looked down at the vial, strangling a whoop of joy that half escaped her lips as it dawned on her what handing that vial to her must have meant for Kolas.
Kolas turned away from Jo and walked to the door.
“Commander Kolas…”
Kolas stopped and faced her, surprising Jo by looking her in the eye.
“…is this from the girl?”
Kolas nodded once without speaking.
“Aren’t you worried about the … besh?”
Kolas’s thin lips disappeared as he pressed them together. “It is as you said before dinner. What good will it do my soul if I am free of besh but all my people are dead?”
Jo thought about that for a moment but found no reply.
Eventually Kolas turned to the door. He paused again and spoke to her without looking back. “It is good that you lock your door, Josephine Lutnear. It would be dangerous for both of us if anyone—even those in my own clan—knew that I had given that to you.”
“I understand.”
Kolas opened the door and went out, leaving Jo wondering just how he had obtained the vial.
As soon as the door clicked closed, the self-imposed spell of restraint that held Jo in check snapped. She nearly ran the four steps to the door and locked it again. Hurrying to the foot of her bed, she pulled out a white case with a large red cross on it that she had yet to open since her arriv
al. Placing the case on the desk, she snapped open the clips to reveal the mobile lab inside. The screen in the lid sprang to life as the lab automatically booted. She inserted the still-sealed vial of blood and pulled out her heads-up from the breast pocket of her jumpsuit and put it down over one eye. Using the thought interface, she commanded the lab to run a full analysis of the blood and to find any foreign particles or pathogens.
Once the lab got started with the analysis, it didn’t take long for the information to start coming back. The computer first recognized that it analyzed Timcree blood. It quickly displayed all the tests that it would run that might be inaccurate because the blood had come from a Timcree.
The screen on the lab momentarily blinked red, stating Unknown Foreign Agents Detected. It then produced an image of what Jo imagined might have been an alien star ship. It had a long fuselage-like middle section and a pointed “bow.” This little piece of biotechnology busily worked to pull apart the double helix of a cell’s DNA.
The focus changed just before Jo could speak. The image pulled back, this time showing a much larger strand of DNA. Here Jo could see that similar attacks were taking place up and down the gene by hundreds, if not thousands, of similar infectants.
Jo felt her chest tighten. It was like watching the organized chaos of an Athenian ant hive. Jo knew in her bones that the activity held purpose.
Where are all of these coming from? she wondered. “Computer, reduce magnification to one-third of the cellular level.”
“Working,” the computer said in an overly cheerful voice. Moving the focus out that far caused the computer to have to shut down its quantum microscope and revert to a simple light-based system. The switch took a minute on the older lab.