by S. L. Viehl
The attack on the medical facility had severely damaged the forensics section, so ChoVa had agreed to bring to the ship the body of one patient who had died while in cryopreservation. It was the only way I could convince her to agree to allow me to perform an autopsy.
“Yes, she is waiting for me.” I rose and looked around the room. “I may return to Vtaga with Healer ChoVa after we have examined the body?”
Reever and Xonea both started to speak at once.
“I can only do one thing,” I reminded them. “Not two. Agree first before you issue orders.”
“As long as security is reestablished, and your escort is increased and better armed, I will permit it,” Xonea said.
My husband remained silent, but the stillness of his features made me think that he was again displeased with me. I thanked the captain and left the conference room, wondering as I went to the lift if my marriage was going to survive this plague any better than the Hsktskt.
When I arrived in Medical, the Omorr was waiting for me, and bounced across the deck toward me with visible agitation.
“Where have you been?”
“Telling men things they did not wish to hear. Was I needed here?” I turned to view the ward, but several patients had been discharged, and those who remained were quiet and appeared in stabilized condition.
“Your Hsktskt is waiting for you to attend this autopsy.” He indicated an examination room on the far side of the bay that was commonly used for laboratory cultures and specimen analyses. “I thawed the remains for her.”
“I thank you.” His stare made me glance down at my garments, which were soiled with smoke, dust, and suspension fluid. “I did not have time to change.”
“The state of your clothing is irrelevant. Are you hurt?” I shook my head, but he removed the headband device I wore, checked it, and inspected me as if I were bleeding from every opening. “You should have come here first. I told Reever that I would have to examine you. What was he thinking?”
“We were escorted from the launch bay to the briefing room on the captain’s orders. You should complain to him.” I went to a garment-storage unit to remove a scrub gown, mask, and gloves, and then stepped behind a screen to strip. “I see you have released Knofki.” I was glad the boy no longer had to be confined to a berth. “Did you decide when we can start the fittings for Dapvea’s prostheses?”
He made no reply, and when I looked around the edge of the screen I saw that his gildrells were so stiff they hardly moved. He was angry with me again.
“We will talk about the patients later,” I said as I finished dressing. “Why were you not at this briefing? I had expected to see you there.”
“You expect me to leave a female Hsktskt here, in my Medical Bay, to do as she pleases?” He sniffed. “I think not.”
“ChoVa will not harm anyone. She may be reptilian, but she is no different than us.” I came out from behind the screen and pulled on the gloves. “We cannot help her people if we treat them as if they all suffer from filth-born fleshrot.”
“Leprosy,” Squilyp snapped.
“As you say.” Perhaps I had offended him by not asking his permission to bring the female Hsktskt on board. “Senior Healer, I would have performed this procedure on the planet, but the forensic lab at their facility was all but destroyed, and it was not safe to travel to another.” I looked at the lower deck. “Next time I promise that I will signal first.”
“Stop doing that!” the Omorr shouted, making me jump. When two nurses stared at us, he brought his temper back under control and added in an almost-level tone, “The Adan signaled the ship the moment the facility was attacked. Then, when I saw the Hsktskt walk in here as if she were in charge …” He made a swift, frustrated gesture.
“I am well,” I assured him. “The Hsktskt will not take over the ship. ChoVa is only here to help me with the autopsy. I regret that our actions caused you worry and concern. Please forgive me.”
His facial skin darkened. “If you cringe in front of me one more time, I vow I will give you a real reason to do so.” He hopped away into his office.
I frowned as I pulled a scrub mask over my head and tucked it under my chin. I did not fear the Omorr, exactly. The Senior Healer might have a terse and unfriendly demeanor—rather like Hasal, Teulon’s second on Akkabarr—but most ensleg males who were not Jorenian seemed to be the same. Still, my attempts to placate his surly moods were not proving to be very effective. Perhaps I would ask his mate if there were some ensleg behavior of which I was ignorant.
ChoVa had already prepared the body for autopsy, I saw as I walked into the isolation room. The Hsktskt healer looked bigger and more alien here, where I was accustomed to only Jorenians, but I felt closer to her than I had on the planet. Perhaps our brush with death at the facility had created an unspoken bond between us, or I simply trusted her more because of it.
“Do you wish to dissect or examine?” I asked her.
“I wish to be a hundred light-years from this place,” she said, pulling down the large mask covering her lower jaw. “Naked and basking in the warmth of an alien star.”
“I do not think I can arrange that,” I admitted. “They have round rooms with machines that simulate such places here on the ship that you may use. After the autopsy, perhaps.”
“Yes, the autopsy.” She made a soft hiss that was almost a sigh. “You are the surgical expert; I know my species. You dissect, I will examine.”
I had not performed many autopsies on Akkabarr—there had rarely been time to worry about how our men died—but the procedure was a simple one and, as before, my hands remembered what my mind did not.
ChoVa switched on the console audio data recorder. “Autopsy on adult male Hsktskt, rank centuron, age forty-four rev,” she said as I made a long, three-sided center incision down the middle of the corpse. “Preliminary cause of death thought to be cellular breakdown as a result of infectious unidentified pathogen and extended cryopreservation.”
The reptilian’s body cavity contained many organs I had never before seen. The same odd familiarity, however, again flooded my thoughts as I studied how the organs were arranged. Some part of me knew what the organ systems were and how they functioned. Following standard procedure, I examined the area surrounding the large cardiac organ before excising it and placing it in a specimen tray.
ChoVa retrieved the tray and took it to the medical scanner console. “Outer cardiac layer displays tissue necrosis consistent with cryo-crystallization,” she said as she placed it in the organ processor’s recess, which scanned it for other imperfections. “No enlargement, unrelated damage, or other defects. Harvesting specimens for further analysis.”
As I continued dissecting, ChoVa examined and removed tissue specimens from several areas of each organ I handed to her. She helped me turn the body to take a sample of spinal tissue and fluid, and then stepped back as I used a lascalpel to cut open the cranial case and remove the yellow-pink cerebral organ.
The Hsktskt brain was much larger than those of most humanoid species, and possessed three distinct hemispheres and a dozen gland clusters that needed separate examination. Once the whole brain had been scanned, I dissected it on a smaller adjoining table and harvested the clusters one by one.
Only one set of glands did not appear normal, and I called ChoVa over to confirm this. “Is this more damage from the cryo?”
She studied the inflamed specimen. “No. From where did you remove these?” When I pointed to the corresponding section, she shook her head and retrieved the cluster with a pair of forceps. “They must be diseased.”
As I was finished with the brain, I joined her at the scanner console. The display showed no trace of disease, but it did flag an unusually high concentration of an enzyme not normally present in the cluster.
“Tohykul,” she said.
I did not know the word. “What is that?”
“A mistake.” After she repeated the cluster scan a second and third time with the same res
ults, she grew impatient. “Do you have another unit? This one is obviously malfunctioning.”
I went out and retrieved a portable scanner unit we used on the ward, wheeled it in, and waited as she conducted a fourth scan. The same elevated enzyme level appeared on the portable’s display.
“What is it?” I had no knowledge of the enzyme, odd or otherwise.
“These results are not viable,” she said as she removed the specimen and stared at it. “Tohykul is present in the Hsktskt brain, but only in trace amounts during gestation and immediately after birth, and never in this quantity.”
“Perhaps it is a synthetic form, administered before death?” I guessed.
“No. It cannot be synthesized. We would never …” She set aside the specimen and regarded me with wide eyes. “Tohykul was once produced in the brains of our ancestors. We believe it was the result of them being overcome by an abnormal state brought on by loss of emotional control, something we only experience now in utero.”
I glanced back at the body. “Does this enzyme cause the same behavioral symptoms as the infected patients have been displaying?”
“No. Tohykul was a survival response and produced the exact opposite. It flooded the body with ten times the average level of blood sugar and increased nerve sensitivity. The result was elevated strength and extreme aggression.” She stepped back to the dissection table and looked inside the open cranial case. “The glands of Hsktskt infants produce a tiny trace amount of tohykul after they are born. It is what makes them so dangerous.”
The dividing line between fear and aggression was not so wide. “This male is not a newborn.”
“Listen to what I say,” ChoVa said, very agitated now. “The gland cluster that produces tohykul cannot do so without the specific trauma of birth. The enzyme no longer exists in the infant’s body after several days. There is no more reason for adult Hsktskt to produce the enzyme.”
“Something caused this male’s mind to manufacture it in great quantity,” I pointed out. “What could be the reason for it?”
“None.” She turned as if to leave, and then faced me. “You do not understand. This only happened to adult Hsktskt in our prehistory, when my people were confronted by threats that no longer exist.”
It seemed I would have to pry this information out of her a word at a time. “You surely face threats now. This plague is a very large and frightening one.”
“Modern Hsktskt do not feel fear of such things. In ancient times, our ancestors did, but those emotions were necessary to help them survive and fight for control of our world. Larger, more primitive life-forms like us populated Vtaga in that era. They caused those reactions in our species as a part of the evolutionary process, especially …” She paused and her throat worked. “The rogur.”
I felt a surge of impatience. “Then this rogur or something like it is the cause of it.”
“Not unless this centuron first traveled back in time,” she told me. “The rogur as well as our other ancient enemies are extinct. Our ancestors killed off all of them ten thousand years ago.”
ChoVa walked out of the examination room. I covered the body and followed her, only to find her gone and Squilyp in my path.
“What happened?” he demanded. “Why does that Hsktskt look as if she wants to use her talons on someone?”
“I am not sure. She is … upset.” I was not certain that ChoVa would wish me to repeat what she had said or pursue her further. “She needs time to be alone now. Is there a nurse available to assist me with finishing this autopsy?”
“I will do it.” The Omorr hopped across the deck and into the examination room.
The Senior Healer proved to be an efficient forensic assistant, but like the ship’s database, could not provide me with information on the rogur or any other ancient, extinct Vtagan life-form.
“The Hsktskt do not share data about their species, history, or planet,” Squilyp told me after I finished a series of unsuccessful inquiries. “Even their language has rarely been recorded. We know nothing about their past except that it is lengthy, violent, and ugly.”
“The evolution of any intelligent species is rarely a short, peaceful, pleasant business.” The clatter of an instrument against a tray drew my attention, and I watched as he tossed another clamp across the table with more force than was necessary “There may be a connection between these ancient creatures, the abnormal enzyme level, and the contagion infecting the Hsktskt. Perhaps this rogur ChoVa mentioned, or another creature like it, was not rendered extinct, and has somehow infected her people.”
“People?” Squilyp rolled the Hsktskt male’s remains to one side to lay out an open body bag beneath it. “They are not people.”
“Of course they are.” I tugged the other edge of the bag to my side of the table. “I think they are more like you ensleg than you know.”
“You are wrong.” He shoved one of the corpse’s limbs into the bag’s recess. “Hsktskt are not people. They have little intelligence and no emotion. They enslave other species and treat them like cargo. They are brutes. Unfeeling monsters.”
I knew most humanoids felt distaste toward slaver species like the Hsktskt, but Squilyp’s anger seemed excessive. “Nevertheless, they are my patients. If I am to help them, I must know more about this enzyme and its effect on them.” I watched as he finished prepping the corpse for transport back to Vtaga. “What is your opinion as to the cause of death?”
The Omorr looked up, surprised. “Clearly systemic damage from the cryopreservative fluid and being frozen too long killed him. Cellular frostnecrosis was evident in all the tissue samples.” His facial skin darkened. “That beast doctor knows this, and yet she continues to freeze her own kind. Is that the sort of behavior an intelligent, compassionate species demonstrates?”
“They are desperate.” I shook my head. “Damage from the cryo is the mechanism, but not the cause. He would not have been subjected to extreme temperature if he had not been infected with this pathogen—”
“No traces of a hostile organism, pathogenic or otherwise, were present in his blood, tissue, or bones,” the Omorr said, sounding testy now.
“None that we could identify,” I corrected. “Cherijo wrote in her journals of a contagion on K-2 that concealed itself by mimicking the cells it infected. Something similar could be happening here.”
“This is completely different.” Squilyp sealed the body bag and went to the nearest cleansing unit, where he scrubbed his membranes with marked ferocity.
I picked up the chart and finished entering the last of the autopsy data, and still he was scrubbing. I went to stand beside him. “Is this need for cleanliness because you are angry with me, or feel renewed contempt for my patients?”
“Both.” He lifted the edge of his single foot from the foot pedal to deactivate the cleanser, but remained staring down at his membranes, which were raw, bright pink. “You do not remember Catopsa, or what these beasts did to you while you were a slave.”
“You speak of Cherijo. I was never on Catopsa, or a slave.” I folded my arms. “They did nothing to me.”
“I weary of thinking of you as two people.” His eyes shifted sideways, and they were narrow and very dark now. “The Hsktskt took you from us. They stranded you on Catopsa and forced you to treat the other slaves, most of whom blamed you for their enslavement. The Hsktskt guards were monsters. One of them beat you, starved you, and branded you over and over when your slave marks healed over.”
“Those things were not done to me.” I thought of my life on Akkabarr, and how terrible things had been for us before and during the rebellion. “I have known my share of pain and deprivation, but the Hsktskt were not responsible for it.” I felt chilled and wrapped my arms around my middle. “I am sorry they hurt Cherijo. It must have caused you pain to know your friend had suffered such things.”
“You don’t want her memories.” His gaze shifted, going to the body bag and then back to my face. “Is that it? Is that what you’re doing? D
eliberately suppressing them?” He whipped out a scanner and held it under my nose. “Think about the Hsktskt.”
“That is all I do.” I pushed the scanner aside. “And I have had enough of this.”
“Cherijo’s memories may be stored in another region of the brain. She was engineered with enhanced capacity. I never thought to …” He glanced at the neuro treatment room. “I must apply stimulation to different areas of your brain.”
“No, you will not.” I reached for the last of my patience. “Senior Healer, you cannot find memories that do not exist. All I have are of Akkabarr and my life there.”
“If that were true, then how were you able to perform that autopsy?” He gestured toward the remains, which two nurses were moving on a gurney. “There were no Hsktskt involved in your rebellion.”
I rubbed my aching temple. “As I have told you before, in the past I have performed many such procedures—”
“But not on the Hsktskt, or any other reptilian life-form. They aren’t like humanoids. Aside from considerable physical differences, they can’t function on ice worlds. The cold kills them. Only Cherijo had the experience to perform this procedure, and that came from her time as a slave on Catopsa. To use her skills, you would have to directly access her memories.” He adjusted his scanner and placed it under my nose again. “Now, try to remember the last operation you performed on the Hsktskt.”
He sounded as agitated as Reever, and yet curiously excited. It made me feel sick.
“This serves no purpose.” I pushed past him. “I must check on ChoVa, and then go to my quarters, Reever will be worried. We will speak of this another time.” I moved toward the door panel.
Squilyp seized my shoulder and turned me around. “You can’t forget her forever.”
“I don’t remember her.” I was shouting, but then, so was he.
ChoVa abruptly entered the room. “My sire wishes to come to this vessel tomorrow and deliver the official apology for involving you and your team in our domestic problems with the outlaws.” She looked from me to Squilyp. “Cease your altercation and advise me as to who arranges such visits.”