by Viehl, S. L.
All of his memories of that time came rushing back into my head, making it ache slightly. “Then perhaps we had better make some travel arrangements, before you are forced to do the same for me.”
Reever stopped the glidecar outside the main entrance to the medical facility. When I moved to climb out, he stopped me. “If we do not give Xonea what he wants, he will find a lawful reason to attack Trellus. I know you’re sympathetic, but we cannot sacrifice all those innocent people merely to protect the one responsible from your ClanBrother’s vengeance.”
“If it becomes a choice between him and the colonists, I will tell Xonea everything he wants to know,” I promised him. “But I think I can put a stop to all of this today.”
Just inside the entrance, the Torin’s Senior Healer, a tall, dark-eyed Omorr male in a modified white and blue doctor’s tunic, hopped back and forth on his one leg. The white prehensile gildrells covering the lower half of his dark pink face were writhing, indicating he was agitated. As soon as he saw us, his living beard twisted into bunched knots.
Xonea must be already here, I thought. “Good morning, Senior Healer.”
“Would that I could say the same, Jarn.” He used one of his three upper limbs to gesture toward the administrative area on the north side of the facility. “Captain Torin has commandeered my offices and is even now searching through our database records. He also plans to interrogate me and the staff of the post-op ward. Apparently, he believes that you knew that the explosive planted in the belly of your last surgical patient was put there to kill you, not her.”
Xonea had been busy. “He said as much to me yesterday.” At least my ClanBrother had not taken a different approach, or what I had planned might not work. “Come. Reever will go and keep him from making a mess of things while you and I make rounds.”
“Rounds?” Squilyp echoed at the same time Duncan said, “I will what?”
I regarded both of them. “Duncan, you would do better away from the patients in recovery; the smell of blood always makes you feel nauseated. Watch Xonea, but allow him to find whatever he can. It will make him feel better to know he was right.” I turned to my friend the Omorr. “You have some objection to my performing rounds with you?”
“While we allow your ClanBrother to collect enough evidence to lawfully declare ClanKill on someone’s world or species?” he snapped. “Why no, not at all. What are the lives of a few million helpless beings in comparison to the twenty I have up on the ward?”
“Squilyp,” I said, hanging on to my patience, “Xonea will do nothing, I promise. Now, I have been marooned for weeks on a dome colony with no hospital and no doctors. When someone wasn’t trying to kill me, they were making me operate with amalgam blades on patients in airlocks. Not to mention what the giant slime-covered worm did to me and Reever.”
Squilyp’s dark eyes widened. “Giant? Slime-covered? What—”
“So now that we have returned to civilization,” I said, ruthlessly interrupting him, “I would like to put these unhappy experiences behind me and do the work that I was trained for in the proper environment. That is, if you have no obj ections, or believe, as Xonea does, that I am too mentally unbalanced to make decisions without assistance.”
“Why would he think . . . ?” The Omorr pressed one appendage end over his eyes, rubbing at them with the webbed membranes that served in place of more humanoid fingers. “No. Don’t tell me. I do not wish to know. We will make rounds.” He eyed my husband. “And you—you will not get in Xonea’s way or send anyone to the trauma center, is that clear?”
Reever said something in Omorr that my vocollar would not translate, and walked away.
On the surgical ward, I reviewed each chart of the post-op patients while Squilyp checked their vitals, performed routine scans, and otherwise behaved himself. We spent the most time with one patient, an older Jorenian male who had sustained multiple internal injuries when the loading platform where he been working had collapsed, dumping nearly a ton of cargo containers on top of him.
“The organ repairs and bone grafts you performed appear to be healing, but his lung capacity remains diminished, and he sustains a fever despite the antibiotic treatments.” I paged through the chart until I found the latest respiratory scan and blood work. Even given his age and the severity of his injuries, the results were not as they should have been. “You have him scheduled for an exploratory tomorrow?”
Squilyp nodded absently as he adjusted the patient’s monitor leads. “I may have missed something during surgery.”
I had operated alongside the Omorr often enough to know that he never missed anything. His meticulous methods and habits were perfection; he also had a peculiar, natural aptitude for sensing and finding potential troubles during procedures that weren’t readily apparent. The cause of the patient’s poor condition had to be from another source.
I regarded the Jorenian male, who was awake, although his eyes seemed unfocused. “Good morning, Palalo Torin. My name is Healer Jarn, and I must talk to you about your accident. I know your throat has not healed enough yet for you to speak, so I will ask questions that require only a gesture of yes or no as an answer. Can you do this for me?”
With his left hand he made a modified affirmative gesture.
“I thank you.” I paged through his chart to the initial intake report. “You were unloading containers of agricultural equipment when the platform failed, is this correct?”
He repeated the affirmative.
“Did the containers break open after they fell?” Palalo made a negative gesture. “Did they leak fuel or liquids?” Another no, but this time not as definite. “Did anything come out of the containers that fell on you?” He hesitated, and then turned his hand over and spread his fingers in a gesture I did not recognize.
“He is not certain,” Squilyp said. “He lost consciousness during the platform failure, and short-term memory loss associated with head trauma is not uncommon among Jorenians.”
I took the Omorr’s scanner and modified the settings before I passed it over the patient’s chest. The resulting readings indicated elevated levels of nitrogen. I had to increase the depth of the scan twice more before the device would identify the source: trace amounts of fungi, now lodged deep inside small ruptures in the patient’s lung tissue, which had become inflamed and closed over.
“You need not operate,” I said to Squilyp, and handed him the scanner. “Fungus has infected his lungs, but we can clear them with a change in his medication.”
“He aspirated mold?”The Omorr consulted the chart. “There was no trace of this in his blood work.”
“There wouldn’t be,” I said as I wrote up orders for the new meds and a deep-tissue breathing treatment. “This is a hybrid fungus, created specifically to prepare soil for cultivation. It breaks down old plant matter and other solids while releasing nitrogen into the soil as a by-product.”
Palalo’s eyes widened, and he made a strong affirmative gesture.
“We should have detected trace amounts in his blood work,” Squilyp said.
I shook my head. “Irrigation or immersion in liquid neutralizes and disperses the fungus; exposure to Palalo’s bloodstream would have rendered it untraceable.”
The Omorr gave me an odd look. “How did it get so deep into his lung tissue?”
“It was also designed to plant itself.” I called over a charge nurse to review the changes in the patient’s treatment before I moved to the next bed. Squilyp, however, kept watching me in an intent manner that made me feel somewhat uncomfortable.
“Don’t you agree with my previous assessment?” I finally asked. “Or has my face become a new diagnostic tool?”
He seemed to choose his words carefully before he replied. “You used mold like the one infecting Palalo’s lungs to treat the soil on Akkabarr?”
“There is no surface soil on my homeworld, only ice. The Iisleg do not farm; they hunt.” I skimmed through the next patient’s chart and noted that the back injury
the patient had sustained had responded well to corrective spinal therapy.
“How did you know what the mold was without checking the medical database?” Squilyp persisted.
“I treated several cases of the same type of infection on K-2. It’s a common complaint among agri workers. They call it planting lung.” I turned to the patient, who was sitting up with an expectant look on her pretty face. “Good morning, Tabrea Torin. You appear to be ready for discharge.”
The big female smiled. “That I am, Healer.”
“Tabrea, your pardon,” the Senior Healer said unexpectedly. “I must consult for a moment in private with Healer Torin.” Squilyp took hold of my arm and guided me away from the berth until we were out of hearing range. “Jarn, are you certain that you treated patients for the same type of mold infection that Palalo has?”
“Of course I am.” His apparent disbelief puzzled me. “The mold is a universal soil treatment used on hundreds of worlds. I’ve seen the same type of infection in the ER dozens of times.”
“Tell me the names of these patients.”
“Their names?” Impatient now, I planted my hands on my hips. “Squilyp, why are you making such a big deal about this? If you don’t agree with my diagnosis—”
The Omorr interrupted me with a curt gesture. “You can’t remember their names, can you?”
I thought for a moment. “No. I can’t. Should I declare myself unfit now, before someone files a grievance against me?”
“You can’t remember their names because you’ve never treated any patients with this mold infection,” the Omorr said. “You’ve never been to K-2, Jarn.”
I opened my mouth, closed it, and then exhaled slowly. “Of course, you are correct. I misspoke. Cherijo saw this type of mold-aspiration infection while she worked on K-2. Does that satisfy you, or must I contact the colony and have someone pull the charts out of the archives to verify the facts?”
“Did Cherijo write about these patients in her journals?” he asked. When I shook my head, he added, “Then Reever must have shared with you his memories of her treating patients with this condition.”
“No, Reever never . . .” I trailed off as what he was saying sank in. “No. My husband did not witness the treatments. He would not have memories of them.” I stared at the Omorr. “I’m right about the source of the infection. Squilyp, I know I am.”
“I have no doubt that you are,” Squilyp said. “That is not what troubles me. Making a correct diagnosis is based on a combination of a physician’s education and personal experience. You have no education, and your practical medical experience is limited to treating the rebels on Akkabarr, the Hsktskt on Vtaga, and some of the colonists on Trellus. Yet somehow you are able to retrieve very specific information about these cases on K-2. Only Cherijo had knowledge of them.”
Anger swelled inside me. This was my body and my life. I was not surrendering them to anyone, even the woman who had owned them first. “Cherijo and her knowledge died on Akkabarr.”
“The brain damage from her head wounds in effect wiped her mind clean,” Squilyp said, as if correcting me. “Her body survived, and the tissue destroyed in the hippocampus as well as the entorhinal, perirhinal, and para-hippocampal nodes fully regenerated. You are the ego and personality that developed after the body’s original mind was destroyed. If you can remember Cherijo’s experiences, her patients . . .”
I made a rolling motion with my hand. “What?”
He glanced down and then back up at my face. “We must discover how you are able to access these memories.”
“Senior Healer, Healer Jarn.” A distressed-looking nurse from one of the lower wards rushed toward us. “Captain Xonea Torin and a detachment of militia are on the recovery ward. They wish to question one of our patients.” She glanced at me. “Your bondmate is there, too, Healer. He says they may not.”
Squilyp and I accompanied the nurse to the rehabilitation ward, which was occupied by patients who needed extensive physical or mental therapeutic treatment. I saw Xonea’s men gathered outside one of the private rooms. They did not have their weapons drawn, but their expressions indicated that might soon change. The only sound I heard were two male voices coming from the room: Reever and Xonea, arguing in Jorenian.
“He never listens to me,” I muttered as I stalked toward the room. Squilyp followed, and Xonea’s men wisely moved out of our way.
Inside the patient room were my husband and my ClanBrother, standing on opposite sides of the berth occupied by the Jorenian female from whom I had removed the arutanium grenade.
“You will step aside, Linguist,” Xonea was saying to my husband, “or I will have you detained.”
“You may try,” Reever replied.
I glanced at the patient, who had her berth linens pulled up around her neck and her eyes tightly closed. She appeared utterly petrified of both men—not that I blamed her. I doubt I would have enjoyed waking up to find a Jorenian warrior and a grim-faced Terran hurling words at each other over me.
“I don’t recall giving either of you permission to speak to my patient,” I said as I went to the end of the berth and picked up her chart. “Good morning, lady,” I said to her, smiling as she opened her eyes. “I apologize for this intrusion. Generally we do not consider terrorizing patients as an acceptable form of therapeutic postoperative treatment.”
“Healer,” she said, her voice laced with panic. “I do not remember what I have done, but I would ask pardon for it.”
“Up until this moment, you have been recovering from major gastrointestinal reconstructive surgery,” I informed her. “For that, you need never apologize.” I turned to Xonea. “Captain Torin. Unless you acquired a medical degree with a specialty in gastrointestinal surgery while Reever and I were on Trellus, you have no business being in this room.”
Xonea scowled. “Cherijo, as your ClanBrother I have the right—”
“Forgive me, was I not specific enough? This is a patient’s private room. You are not a physician or a therapist.” I pointed toward the entry panel. “Get. Out.”
He glared down at me, his shoulders rigid with indignation, and then he strode out of the room.
I regarded my husband. “I suppose you did not signal me about this before confronting Xonea because your wristcom is malfunctioning.”
“Something like that,” Reever agreed.
Squilyp hopped over to the patient’s berth. “Would you excuse us, lady?” When she made a small, tight, affirmative gesture, the Senior Healer led us into the adjoining treatment room and closed the door panel.“There is something I have to tell you before this goes any further.”
“You are not allowing Xonea to question my patient,” I told him.
“Of course I wouldn’t,” he snapped. “It wouldn’t do any good if he did.”
I closed my eyes briefly. “What is it?”
“In light of the patient’s amnesia, I ordered a full neurological workup,” Squilyp said. “Whoever planted the grenade in her body also injected her with a drug we have still not identified. Here are her latest brain scans and the neurologist’s prognosis.” He handed me a datapad.
Reever also looked at the data and read the report summary before he looked at Squilyp. “Have you told her?”
“Yes, after I consulted with several other neurologists,” the Omorr said, and saw my scowl. “Jarn, she deserved to know the truth.”
“The truth might have waited until her body healed.” I had not had time to perform a proper visual assessment, or I would have checked her neck for her Clan Symbol, a small black birthmark that in normal Jorenians indicated genetic lineage. “Her Clan Symbol remains indistinct?”
“Yes. We have sent out signals to all of the HouseClans, along with a detailed physical description and images of her features, but none have claimed her.” Squilyp hesitated before adding, “Her DNA does not match any known HouseClan profile.”
“Run the tests again,” I said, “because that isn’t possible.”
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“Were she born on Joren, I would agree with you.” The Omorr’s gildrells undulated with agitation. “She has the physical appearance of an adult Jorenian female, but there are some cellular anomalies in her tissues and fluids that are not inherent to the species.”
“She may have been alterformed specifically to infiltrate Joren,” Reever suggested.
The Omorr shook his head. “There are always signs on the cellular level of genetic tampering: strand splicing, chromosome deformation, and the like. I did not detect any of them. Once I could not match her DNA profile to any HouseClan, I thought she might be the product of forced breeding by a slaver.”
“No freeborn Jorenian would reproduce in captivity,” Reever said.“They do not tolerate enslavement. Like the Hsktskt, they commit suicide at the first opportunity.”
I recalled Marel’s pictures of Kol and Jory. “Not all. The members of HouseClan Kalea are the children of enslaved Jorenian females who were force-bred by their owners. Perhaps something like that happened to her Jorenian parent.”
“Whatever her origins, this female is in many ways like a newborn infant—much like you were, Jarn, when you first came to consciousness on Akkabarr,” Squilyp tagged on. “Xonea can question her all he likes, but she will be unable to provide him answers. We believe the drug administered to her effectively destroyed her memory center.”
“Are all forms of amnesia considered mental defects on this world?” I asked.
The Omorr shook his head. “Not unless it is accompanied by delusions or psychosis.”
“It’s nice to know that I’m either delusional or psychotic.” The time had come for me to put an end to Xonea’s scheming. “Here.” I took the scroll case out of my tunic and offered it to my husband. “It’s written in old Jorenian script. If need be, can you read it?”
“Yes.” Reever removed the scroll and unrolled it, his eyes skimming over it. “An interesting document.” He replaced it in the case and met my gaze. “I will not ask where you obtained this.”
I nodded. “That would be best.”