Several seconds of silence followed, then a voice came back over the radio, "HMS Vengeance, this is Longyearbyen town, we copy. What is the nature of your medical emergency?"
Mac quickly explained what had happened.
"HMS Vengeance, please stand by." There was another long pause then, "HMS Vengeance, we will be sending a medical crew. Please prepare for our arrival."
"Roger that. Thank you," said Mac and signed off.
Five minutes later, the sound of an outboard motor echoed across the mountains. A medium-sized boat with a large red cross on its side appeared from the direction of Longyearbyen and quickly closed on the submarine. Pulling alongside the Vengeance, the Norwegian crew tossed a line to a waiting seaman who tied it off.
A woman carrying a black medical bag appeared and Mac offered her his hand, helping her aboard.
"Hello," said the woman, in a heavy French accent. "My name is Doctor Renée Candillier."
"I'm Emily and this is my husband, Mac."
"I am happy to meet you both. Where is the patient?"
Mac led the doctor to where the captain lay. Emily and Mac both stayed back and allowed the doctor room to work on her patient. Candillier checked the gash over Constantine's right eye, then his breathing, his eyes, and heart, before examining his leg. She pulled a syringe from her bag, filled it with an opaque liquid and injected it into the muscle of his broken leg. The captain's face visibly relaxed within a few seconds of the injection. She then proceeded to fit a temporary splint to the leg, stabilizing the injured limb with a plastic tie to his other leg.
Candillier stood and walked over to where Mac and Emily waited. "He has a very bad fracture in his right leg. I also believe that he has probably broken his ankle, but the only way to be certain is to get him back to my clinic and x-ray him. The morphine injection I gave to him will help with the pain. Do I have your permission to transport him?"
Mac looked at Emily. Emily looked at Mac. They both nodded.
"Very well," said the doctor. She waved at the two men waiting on the boat. They grabbed a stretcher and climbed aboard.
"I'd like one of my men to accompany the captain," said Mac.
The doctor nodded, watching as the two orderlies set the stretcher down next to the captain and gently began to move his body onto it.
"Billings, front and center," Mac yelled. One of the two men watching the captain jogged over to Mac.
"Sir?"
Mac handed him his portable radio. "Take my radio and accompany the captain. We'll have someone relieve you in a few hours. Any problems, report back to me immediately. Understood?"
"Yes, sir," said Billings, he turned and walked back to help transfer the captain onto the boat.
"Doctor Candillier?" Emily said, stepping over to where the woman was supervising captain's transfer.
The doctor turned, "Oui?"
"We...that is, Mac and I...we have a...our daughter, Rhiannon, she was injured on the journey here. She's become blind. Would it be possible for us to stop by your clinic tomorrow and have you check her out?"
The doctor smiled. "Yes, of course. Say two o'clock tomorrow?"
Emily smiled back and offered her hand. "Thank you."
Candillier shook Emily's hand. "That is what I am here for." She turned to Mac. "Don't worry, we will take very good care of your captain."
"Thank you, doc," said Mac. He helped the doctor back over her boat's gunwales. She followed behind the stretcher as the two orderlies moved through a doorway into the boat’s cabin. Minutes later, the engine turned on and the boat pulled away.
Emily and Mac waited on the Vengeance’s deck, watching the boat until it disappeared around a bluff.
CHAPTER 4
The next afternoon Emily, Mac, Rhiannon, and Thor boarded a boat brought alongside the Vengeance by Petter Djupvik, and headed back to Longyearbyen. The sea was choppy, sending the military assault craft bouncing over two-meter high waves, curtailing all conversation until the group pulled into Longyearbyen's harbor. An SUV waited for them while they climbed out of the boat and quickly set off for the hospital.
"I wanted to thank you for rendering assistance to the captain," Mac said to Petter.
The Norwegian nodded. "I believe you would have done the same were the positions reversed."
"Well, no matter what your council decides, we owe you."
Five minutes later, the SUV pulled up in front of the hospital, a two-level building close to the center of the town.
"When news of the red rain came," Petter said, holding the door of the SUV open for Emily to help Rhiannon out, "like the council members, many of our medical staff opted to go back to the mainland. We now have only two general practitioners, a physiotherapist, a midwife, and several volunteer nurses. You met Dr. Candillier yesterday when she helped your captain after his unfortunate accident."
"She seems like a nice person," Emily said, closing the SUV door behind Rhiannon.
"She is very competent," said Petter. "She will remain Captain Constantine's primary physician, but regrets that her duties will not allow her to see you today. She has arranged for doctor Johansen to examine Rhiannon."
"Is the captain okay?" Rhiannon asked, pushing the sunglasses Mac had given her further up her nose.
"Yes, little one, he is doing very well, considering. This way please." He ushered them through the main entrance, nodded to a young man behind the reception desk, then led them down a corridor.
"Here you are, Mac," Petter said, pointing to a door on the left side of the hall. "The captain is in there with Doctor Candillier."
"I’ll see you back in reception when we're both done," Mac told Emily. He squeezed her hand, ruffled Rhiannon's hair, knocked on the door, then slipped inside the private room when a female voice beyond told him he could enter.
"If you would like to come with me, please, ladies," Petter said, walking farther along the corridor. He stopped five doors down, knocked on the door, then opened it and stepped inside. "Please, come in."
A man, somewhere in his forties sat behind a desk. He looked tired, with the dark bags under his eyes, pale skin, and an unkempt beard matching his receding dirty-blond hair. He smiled broadly as Emily and Rhiannon entered the room.
"Hello. Hello," he said jovially. He stood and took Emily's hand, shaking it enthusiastically. "You must be Rhiannon," he continued, reaching for the girl's hand, shaking it with as much enthusiasm as he had Emily's, which made Rhiannon giggle. "My name is Dr. Eirick Johansen, and I am going to be your doctor."
Rhiannon smiled at the doctor's contagious enthusiasm. "Nice to meet you," she said.
"Please, come this way," the doctor said, opening a door that led into an examination room.
Petter touched Emily on her arm. "I'll wait for you in the reception, okay?"
"Mind looking after Thor?"
"Of course," said Petter. "Come on, Thor."
The malamute looked at Emily. "Go with Petter," Emily said, handing his leash to the major. "And be a good boy."
Petter laughed. "I am always a good boy," he said, then left with Thor before Emily could figure out if he had misunderstood her or was making a joke.
"Norwegians," Emily sighed. "Not sure I'm ever going to get used to them."
•••
"I've run as many tests as I can with the equipment we have available here, but I can't see any medical reason for Rhiannon's blindness," said Doctor Johansen, an hour later. "Of course, we would need to have her examined more closely at a better-equipped hospital, preferably by a specialist. But, given the current situation, that does not seem probable."
"What about the...discoloration?" Emily said.
"To me, it seems to be just that, a change in pigmentation, nothing more. Structurally, her eyes seem perfectly normal. "
"Will I ever get my sight back?" Rhiannon asked. Her voice was quiet, small.
"It is possible that what you are experiencing might be...ummm, what is the word...imaginary?"
&nbs
p; "Psychosomatic?" Emily offered.
"Yes, psychosomatic. It might all be in your head." Johansen tapped gently on Rhiannon's temple.
Rhiannon blinked. "You think I'm crazy? I'm not crazy."
"No, no, no. It might be that your blindness is caused by the stress of what you went through, rather than the venom. It's hard for me to think of a reason for why a predator would want to blind you rather than kill or paralyze you. You understand? So, it is possible that your mind is playing tricks on you, that it just expects you to be blind, for whatever reason. That is why I think it could be the shock of what happened to you."
Emily shook her head. "I don't think so. She was stung by a kind of alien bug. She was unconscious for a long time."
Doctor Johansen shrugged again. "I am sorry, Emily. I have done everything that I can with what I have available. Other than the blindness, I can find nothing else wrong with Rhiannon."
Emily smiled and offered the doctor her hand. "Thanks anyway, doctor." She placed an arm around Rhiannon's shoulders and guided her out to the waiting room.
"I really am very sorry I could not be of more help," Johansen said, sitting back down behind his desk.
Emily nodded. "Thank you again."
They followed the corridor back toward the reception area. "Don't worry," Emily said. "We'll find someone who can fix this. There has to be someone." Her mind drifted back to the few days she and Rhiannon had spent in the Caretaker ship while Adam built the original machine to transport them here to Svalbard, Adam had made no mention of being able to heal Rhiannon's blindness. But when the machine was finally revealed to them, he had instructed Rhiannon to take the helm within the sparse control room. When she sat in the command seat, the girl had given out a gasp of surprise. "I can see!" she had said. "I...I..."
"What? How?" Emily had exclaimed, taking the girl's hand in hers.
"It's...amazing! I can see so much more than before I lost my sight."
Emily had jumped as, from nowhere, Adam's voice had resonated within her head, despite him being buried deep within the bowels of the Caretaker ship, some hundred meters or more away from them. She hadn't been sure if she was ever going to get used to that.
"I have linked the machine's intelligence to Rhiannon, he had explained to his mother. She will be the one to control it. It will listen to you, Mommy, protect you always, but its operator must be Rhiannon. It is an extension of her now, the best that I can do to fix her wounds at this point." Adam had made no mention of whether he would be able to make Rhiannon whole again, but the implication was there that he might. And that was something for Emily to hold on to. Adam had switched his attention to Rhiannon, but his voice still echoed in Emily's mind. "The machine will follow your commands, Rhiannon. You will see on frequencies you never dreamed existed."
"How do I make it go?" Rhiannon had asked aloud, a childlike excitement in her voice.
"It is you, Rhiannon. Simply think a destination or action as you would for your own body, or say it aloud. It will do your bidding. Take you wherever you wish to travel."
"Run," Rhiannon had said without warning.
Emily had screamed aloud as the craft had suddenly raised itself on its multiple legs and begun to run, quickly picking up speed. Like some barely tamed stallion, it had galloped across the land at a breakneck pace, leaping over hedgerows, and brush, dodging between the trunks of Titan trees.
"Oh my God, be careful," Emily had yelled, grabbing at the seat's armrests, as the craft dodged left and right through the forest. "Careful!"
"I'm not telling it what to do," Rhiannon said, her words barely audible behind her unrestrained laughter. "It’s avoiding everything itself."
It had quickly become apparent that piloting the vehicle was a mainly passive experience. Its innate intelligence allowed it to avoid any obstacle that it was presented with while it attempted to carry out whatever command Rhiannon ordered of it.
"Take us back to Adam," Rhiannon commanded. Obediently the Machine had described a wide arc through the trees, and run back to the ship, stopping almost exactly where it had begun.
Now, as Emily and Rhiannon walked to the hospital's reception area, Emily wondered whether Adam had specifically given Rhiannon control of the craft for that exact purpose; to keep her spirits high, to give her the ability to participate within the coming struggle, because he knew that there was little or nothing he could do to restore her sight to what it once was. If she was correct in her assessment, then it meant her son was a compassionate soul. And that was just fine by her.
Of course, now that the Machine was to all intents and purposes dead, that hope had been torn away from Rhiannon and her spirits had noticeably sunk. That was why Emily had asked for this appointment, in the hopes that maybe there was something human medicine could do for her, but that hope too had been denied the girl.
Mac and Petter were already waiting in the reception area, sitting on a comfortable sofa talking like old friends, Thor resting comfortably on the floor at their feet. Both men stood when they saw Emily and Rhiannon approaching. Thor got up and greeted them as well.
"How's the captain doing?" Emily asked, reaching out to scratch the malamute's head.
"Considering he has a double fracture, he's pretty chipper," said Mac. "Course that might be down to the pain meds he's on. Good drugs these Norwegians have."
Emily was glad to see some of the concern for the skipper had left Mac's face. The two men had a close friendship that went beyond their professional interaction, almost a father-son relationship. "I'm glad the old man's doing well," she said.
"He's going to be out of commission for several months though. He's given me temporary command of the Vengeance."
"Well, okay. Congratulations on the promotion."
"Petter was just telling me that the council has prepared that apartment they mentioned for us here in town. We can stay there while they make their decision. Petter says it's big enough for all four of us."
Rhiannon gave a little whoop. "Thank goodness. I hate being stuck on that submarine."
"I'll radio the sub and let them know we'll be living it up on the island for a couple of days," said Mac.
"Well," said Emily. "I guess that's decided."
All three adults laughed.
•••
Petter escorted them from the hospital. He seemed more relaxed, happily chatting about the island's history as they crunched through the snow toward their apartment.
"Did you know this town was named after an American businessman?" he asked Emily.
Emily shook her head. "Really? It seems like such a distant place for an American to turn up in."
"John Munroe Longyear owned one of the companies that first began coal mining here in the early twentieth century. So, I suppose we have you and your country to thank for our continued existence."
Emily smiled at the nugget of information. "It just seems so inhospitable. It's hard to imagine what would draw people here under normal circumstances."
"The people here are good people, brave, good-hearted," he said. "Scientists, mostly, but there are some poets and writers. It attracts...what is the word?...dreamers. I think maybe we are all dreamers here."
"You sound as though you love this town very much," Emily said.
"I do, yes. You don't come to this kind of a place unless you are dedicated, loyal to the search for what it is that you are looking for. Or maybe I should say, you don't come here and stay unless all that is true."
Thor was happily running ahead of the four humans, tail wagging furiously, bounding through the drifts that had collected along the side of the road. The last time she had seen him this happy was in Alaska, on the way to the Stockton Islands to meet Jacob. Back then, she had not been able to appreciate the malamute's pure joy, her focus squarely on surviving the deadly environment to try to reach the perceived safety that Jacob had said he offered. Now, relaxed, and out for what amounted to an afternoon stroll, she could simply enjoy him enjoying himself
.
As if he had sensed Emily's thoughts, Thor, his nose suddenly high in the air sniffing furiously, gave a short, deep bark, and took off running toward the space separating two nearby houses.
"Hey, Thor, get back here," Emily yelled after the dog.
Thor stopped momentarily and looked back at Emily, barked once, and took off again.
"Well, shit!" said Mac, his eyebrows raised as he watched the dog run between the houses. "This is a first."
Emily was stunned. In all the years she and Thor had been together, he had never once disobeyed her, that she could remember. "Thor!" she yelled again, but the dog did not stop. He disappeared around the back of a house.
Petter apparently found it amusing. "Perhaps he does not want to leave the snow just yet?" he said, smiling.
"Uh huh," Emily replied. "Can I go get him?"
"Of course," said Petter. "We will wait here for you to return."
Emily followed Thor's tracks between the houses, calling his name as she trudged through the deeper snow that had piled up there. "I swear to God, mutt, if you make me follow your ass halfway around this—" Emily rounded the back of the house and stopped dead in her tracks.
"Wow!" she said, eventually.
A chain link fence that came up to Emily's waist cordoned off an area at the rear of the house. It extended about ten meters from the back door. Thor stood on his hind legs, his front legs resting on the top rail of the fence, his tail moving back and forth furiously.
And he had found a friend.
A German Shepherd, as white as the snow that surrounded her mirrored Thor, her tail moving just as frantically as his. The two were almost muzzle to muzzle, sniffing each other cautiously, but happily.
Extinction Point: Kings (Extinction Point Series (5 book series)) Page 4