Crystal Healer

by Viehl, S. L.

  My husband nodded. “Qonja and Hawk are rigging some ropes to the trees. Tie him to you, and we’ll pull you both out.”

  While I waited for the ropes, I took a syrinpress from my pack and administered a painkiller. The Skartesh opened his eyes as soon as he felt the infusion and glared at me.

  “You’re wasting your drugs.” He ducked his head and looked down at the glowing marks on his fur. “Look at this. Look at what you’ve done.”

  “What I’ve done? I only jumped in here.” I took his vital signs, which were weak but steady. “You seem to be doing all the healing yourself.” When he said nothing, I added, “Is this why your patients recover so quickly? Are you some sort of touch healer?”

  He made a disgusted sound and closed his eyes.

  By the time Reever lowered the ends of two ropes, Jylyj had fallen unconscious. I turned him on his side and worked the rope under his arms and then lay down and faced him as I wrapped it around me, pulled it tight, and knotted it. I grabbed my pack, wedged it between us, and then rolled onto my back, holding him against me as I called up to my husband.

  “Ready.”

  The ropes bit into my sides as they began hauling us up from the bottom of the pit. On the way up, Jylyj groaned a few times but never regained consciousness, and when Reever reached in to take my outstretched hand, my longshirt and leggings were soaked with Skartesh blood.

  Reever cut the ropes, and Qonja and Hawk lifted Jylyj between them.

  “Take him,” my husband said. “Quickly.”

  I was about to warn them about the treacherous ground when I saw all the collapsed areas were filled with pools of a white liquid. I turned my head and saw the pit was filling with the same.

  “Duncan,” Uorwlan called out. She sounded scared. “Move it.”

  I looked down and saw the liquid crystal erupting through the soil, spreading and covering and solidifying over everything it touched. Reever lifted me off my feet, held me against his chest, and ran for the trees. He jumped over a stream of the liquid crystal, just clearing it before we were in the shelter of the trees. I looked over his shoulder and saw shafts sprouting up like plants.

  The guide nearly ripped my husband’s sleeve as he pulled us away from the clearing. With a final look, Duncan turned and carried me through the grove.

  When we reached the meadow, the guide reluctantly allowed us to stop and catch our breath. Reever put me on my feet, and I opened my pack as I went to where Qonja and Hawk had laid Jylyj on the ground.

  I scanned him three times and then pulled back his garments to see the wounds for myself. No longer bleeding or open, they were all now thick scars. As I touched one, I felt it softening and watched it disappear into his flesh. Tiny hairs began to grow, covering the new skin.

  I glanced up at my husband. “He heals like I do.”

  “Maggie once told Cherijo that her people had made others like her,” Reever said, his voice tight. “He must be one of them.”

  Uorwlan loomed over the Skartesh. “He’ll be all right, won’t he?”

  I realized that she and the others hadn’t seen Jylyj impaled on the crystals as I had, and debated for a moment on what to tell her. If the Skartesh had been created to be like me, he had probably gone to great lengths to conceal it.

  “He has some internal injuries and he’s lost a great deal of blood,” I said at last. I’d only brought the most basic medical supplies with me; half of my equipment remained in the shelter. “We have to get back to the encampment. If I can’t cross-match a donor from the oKiaf, we’ll have to evacuate him to the ship.”

  “That’s going to be difficult,” Reever said. “When I went after you, I dropped my pack. It fell into one of the holes in the clearing. The crystal engulfed it before I could retrieve it.”

  “I have one back at camp,” Uorwlan said. “You can use it to signal your people.”

  The guide called to Reever as he dragged several branches from the thicket.

  “He says we can make a litter to carry him,” my husband said. “Uorwlan, get three of those blue broad-leaf plants. Qonja, Hawk, gather some strong vines.” He glanced at me. “What do you need?”

  “A hospital.” I checked Jylyj’s pulse, which remained weak. “He seems to be holding on, but hurry.”

  The guide and Reever stripped the branches of their leaves while the others gathered the plants from the meadow. I watched as the men built a long, narrow frame by lashing short and long branches together with vines at the cross sections. The guide punched holes with a dagger through the tough edges of the broad-leafed blue plants and lashed them across the frame, creating a supporting surface for Jylyj’s body. Uorwlan reinforced it by volunteering her cloak, which Reever draped over the frame before the men brought the makeshift litter over to me.

  I showed them how to lift him, and then secured his body to the frame with pieces of the rope. Qonja and Hawk lifted one end of the frame, and Reever and the guide the other. When I would have moved to the front to lead them toward the pass, Uorwlan shook her head.

  “I’ll take up the lead,” she said, and pointed to the Skartesh. “You stay beside him.”

  We moved as fast as we could, but carrying Jylyj slowed the men, and the trek back to the encampment took twice as long. Several tribesmen ran out as soon as we were spotted by the watch, and helped carry Jylyj to our kiafta.

  “Put him on the platform,” I said as I went to retrieve my supplies from the packs. When one of the tribesmen seized my arm, I glared at him. “Let go of me.”

  He spoke to me in a sharp voice and gestured toward Jylyj, but released me as soon as Reever came over to us.

  “They’re angry. The guide told them Jylyj entered the forbidden area, and—in his words—woke up the crystal. To them, that is an unforgivable offense.” My husband then spoke at length to the tribesman, who seemed to calm a little but spoke sharply again before he strode out.

  “What are they going to do?”

  “Nothing. You can treat him.” Reever rubbed his eyes with his fingers. “We have to leave, though, first thing in the morning.”

  “We have to leave as soon as Uorwlan can signal the Sunlace,” I said as I went over to the platform. “I need to move him to the medical bay as soon as possible.”

  “They won’t allow Uorwlan to use her transceiver,” my husband said. “They’re contacting the Elphian to come and remove all of us from the planet.”

  My first priority was to examine Jylyj properly, so I drafted Hawk to serve as my assistant as I cut off the Skartesh’s garments and began the visual assessment. On the outside of his body I found patches of short, newly grown fur, the only indications of where he had been impaled on the crystal, and counted twenty-eight separate wounds—all of which were healed over as if they had never happened.

  I scanned his internal organs, from the top of his head to the pads of his paws, and found only a few traces of cellular disturbance. From the locations, Jylyj had suffered life-threatening penetrating injuries to both lungs, his heart, liver, spleen, and one of his four kidneys, as well as a rupture of his stomach and complete severing of his intestines in five different places.

  From the extent of the injuries, he should have died almost instantly after jumping into that pit, and yet he had only a few lingering bruises and a mild inflammation of the abdomen, as if he had just recovered from a minor case of gastric infection instead of what had to have been a terminal-level peritoneal infection.

  His remarkable ability to heal had not yet compensated for his blood loss, however, and as I ran the hematology scan, I found the expected drop in his white and red blood cell count. He had lost a little over half of his blood supply; in a normal being that would call for an immediate transfusion. But while the blood loss kept him unconscious and his vital signs weak, his body didn’t seem to be suffering any other ill effects from it. Time and plenty of fluids would probably allow his enhanced immune system to regenerate and replace all on its own what he had bled out.

&
nbsp; I set up a portable monitor and put the Skartesh on a saline IV, and then tucked a coverlet around him.

  “How did he lose so much blood?” Hawk asked. “There are no wounds on him anywhere.”

  “There were.” I trusted Hawk, and he had too much medical knowledge to be fooled by any story I made up. “Jylyj’s immune system is like mine. He heals almost spontaneously.”

  “So that is his secret.” The crossbreed gave the unconscious Skartesh a thoughtful look. “Qonja said there was something he wished to hide.” He frowned. “Joseph Grey Veil couldn’t have made him, could he?”

  I shook my head. “Cherijo’s creator was not the only one responsible for making her the way she was. The Jxin female who pretended to be her mother also had something to do with it. She claimed there were others made to fight the black crystal. Jylyj has to be one of them.”

  “That must be the reason he jumped into that pit,” Hawk said. “No sane being would do so unless they were suicidal.”

  The only oKiaf who was permitted to enter the kiafta was Trewa, who kept her head down as she brought in food. I had never had the chance to repay her for the gift of the bracelet, so I stopped her before she could leave.

  Now that Reever had absorbed enough oKiaf to speak it, I could have asked him to interpret for me, but instead I removed the moonstone necklace Hawk had given me and offered it without words.

  Trewa touched the beads, looked down into my eyes, and inclined her head so I could place the necklace around her neck.

  I grasped her paws with my hands and thanked her in oKiaf.

  A guard looked in, making both of us jump, and Trewa quickly hurried out. I went back to Jylyj, and Reever met me beside the platform.

  “Uorwlan has a short-range backup transceiver in her pack,” he said, keeping his voice low. “It’s not powerful enough to signal the Sunlace, but she can send a relay to her shuttle pilot. He’s ferrying supplies from the station and should be in orbit. He’ll relay a message to Xonea.”

  I checked Jylyj’s vitals, which had dropped enough to alarm me. “I thought he was stable, but he’s getting weaker now. I don’t think the oKiaf will volunteer a donor, and the only cross-matched blood I have for him is on the Sunlace. I need to get him back to the ship.”

  “Xonea should be able to convince the Elphian of the urgency of the situation.” He traced a half circle under my right eye. “You look exhausted. Let Hawk watch him while you get a few hours of sleep.”

  “I’m fine.” I kissed him. “Go, and don’t let the guards catch you. We’re in enough trouble already.”

  Darkness crept up around the kiafta as I watched over Jylyj. If the Jxin had created him with the same immune system I possessed, it had been overloaded or was no longer working. With every passing hour, he grew a little weaker.

  Hawk brought me something that I ate without tasting, and kept watch with me until I sent him to rest.

  “I will need you fresh in the morning to help me transport him,” I said when the crossbreed tried to protest.

  “You will wake me if you need help,” he insisted, and only after I gave him my word, reluctantly went to join Qonja in their shelter.

  When I was alone with the Skartesh, I sat on the ground beside the platform and rested my head back against the edge of the grass-stuffed cushion. I didn’t tell Hawk that if Jylyj’s condition didn’t soon improve he would likely be helping me transport a corpse in the morning. I turned my head to look at the monitors, and saw my patient watching me, his eyelids opened only to slits.

  “We’re back at the encampment,” I told him. “Your wounds have healed.”

  “Not all,” he whispered, his voice a thin thread of pain. “Why save me?”

  Had he jumped into that crystal pit in hopes of killing himself? “I never learned how to let someone die. Did they teach you that in medical school?”

  “No. Learned it before.” He lifted a paw and touched my hair, threading the blunt ends of his claws through the strands. “Never met another like me. Thought I was alone.”

  Suddenly, I understood many things. “Why didn’t you tell me? Of all people, I would have understood.”

  “Angry. Afraid. The League . . . alterforming . . .” He drifted off for a moment, and then jerked back awake. “Jarn, after . . . destroy my body. Please.”

  He was afraid of the League, afraid of being discovered—and terrified of what they would do with his body. I had never considered what would happen if immortal DNA was used to alterform a normal being. Was that to be my fate?

  “I will.” I pressed my hand over his paw. “I promise.”

  Fourteen

  Reever returned alone, and after refusing the food Trewa had brought, sat with me to watch over Jylyj. I told him about the Skartesh’s brief period of consciousness, and what he had asked of me. Reever agreed that if Xonea couldn’t get to us in time and we lost Jylyj, that we would at the first opportunity send his body into the oKiaf’s sun.

  “I don’t understand why he’s dying,” my husband said. “Cherijo explained most of the bioengineering that had been done to her, and from what she said she couldn’t bleed to death. Even if she sustained hundreds of wounds, her blood always clotted within a few seconds. If he is like her—like you—he should have done the same.”

  “Something interfered with Jylyj’s immune response,” I said. “Perhaps the crystal impaling his body. Now something is preventing his bone marrow from producing replacement cells. I’ve scanned him a dozen times, but I can’t detect anything responsible for it. Here, see for yourself.” I handed him the scanner I had been using on the Skartesh.

  Reever skimmed through the readings I had taken. “This is calibrated to read the body’s cells and other organic substances. Can you adjust it to scan for crystal?”

  “I don’t have to; it picks up trace minerals, as well,” I said, frowning as I took back the device and isolated those readings. Normally, I wouldn’t have paid any attention to the minute amounts of minerals that were present in any living being’s body, not unless some heavy metal contamination or poisoning was suspected. I scrolled through the list and found a sizeable amount of one mineral had been detected in the bloodstream.

  The scanner, which had not recognized it, listed it as unknown.

  “I thought his body had forced the crystal out of it as it healed.” Cursing myself for making such a stupid assumption, I recalibrated the scanner. “I need to see the readings you took in the meadow today.”

  My husband retrieved the scanner he had used to detect the underground deposits of protocrystal, and handed it to me. I compared the compositional readings and swore again.

  “His body didn’t reject the crystal,” I said. “It absorbed it.”

  I ran another complete scan of Jylyj’s body and looked at the mineral display. In the hour since I had performed my previous scan, the amount of liquid protocrystal in his bloodstream had increased by two percent.

  “It’s still circulating through his body.” I felt like throwing the scanner across the room. “And that’s not all. It’s growing.”

  Reever glanced down at the Skartesh. “Can it be removed?”

  “I might be able to filter it out with dialysis, or a complete replacement transfusion.” I tried to think, but all I could see was how the liquid crystal had consumed the clearing in a matter of seconds. “Did you hear anything from Uorwlan’s pilot? Is Xonea coming for us?”

  “The pilot was able to transmit a brief relay. He’ll arrive in a few hours and land outside the encampment. If the oKiaf will release us to him, he’ll transport us back to the station.”

  The tribe and the primitive conditions in which they lived no longer charmed me.

  “Why do these people live like this?” I said, dragging a hand over my hot face. “They have no doctors, no proper medical facilities. Even on Akkabarr we had healers, and all the medicines and supplies we could salvage from the wrecks.”

  “He’s as strong as you are,” Reever said.
“He’ll keep fighting it.”

  If he didn’t turn into a chunk of crystal before the shuttle arrived. I thought of the heartwood trees, and how the crystal had stopped growing at the tree line. “Do you still have the litter we used to carry Jylyj into the camp?”

  My husband gestured toward the entry flap. “It’s just outside.”

  “I need one of the heartwood branches from the frame.” If I could discover what substance in the trees repelled the crystal, I might be able to synthesize an agent that would stop it from spreading, or even help flush it out of his bloodstream.

  After a brief conversation with the guards, Reever brought back a short branch from the litter. I cut a sliver from the raw end and placed it in the analyzer. The results surprised me.

  “It looks like wood on the inside, but it’s mostly made of hardened resin.” I felt bemused. “This branch is dead, and the resin is almost fossilized. No wonder it takes forever to burn.”

  The analyzer began listing the elements and compounds it detected in the resin, all of which appeared ordinary: oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, hydrogen, and so forth. Then the display showed a trace of an alloy, Cu2Au, which apparently accounted for the color of the wood.

  “This tree absorbs two metals, copper and gold, from the ground,” I said. “They combine into an alloy that is not present in the soil.”

  “Gold is harmless, but copper in large amounts can be poisonous to many living things.” Reever studied the cut end of the branch. “It may bond the gold to the copper to change its properties and keep it from accumulating and killing the tree.”

  “If that alloy does not occur naturally in the soil, it could be the deterrent we’re looking for.” I went to the platform and used a probe to draw a few drops of blood from Jylyj, placing them in a vial and scanning them to confirm the presence of the protocrystal. As I did, Jylyj’s blood began to crystallize.

  Quickly, I extracted a sample of the Cu2Au alloy from the heartwood resin, and added it to the vial of blood. The crystallized blood instantly liquefied.