by neetha Napew
He left me standing in front of an Yturi’s cell. I looked in, tried a half-hearted smile. The sad-eyed creature beckoned to me.
I walked closer to the cell wall and involuntarily placed my hand against the cool surface. “Are you sick? Are you in pain?”
The Yturi took a moment to put on its headgear before it answered. Its normally strident voice barely emerged through the thick mineral wall. “Are you a physician?”
“Yes, I’m Dr. Torin.” I frowned as I inspected its derma. For an Yturi, it looked very unhealthy. “Aren’t you eating?”
“Yes, but the inhibitors they put in our food are disgusting.”
“Inhibitors?”
“Chemicals to prevent self-propagation.” It pressed a leaf-shaped appendage over its thorax. “It makes most of us sick-I should have bred months ago.”
That’s what the beast meant by population regulation.
By then the Hsktskt had returned, and I whirled on him. “You drug them to keep them sterile?”
He indicated the next corridor. “We will proceed now.”
I glanced at the Yturi. “I’ll be back.”
It took time to tour the entire prisoner tier stockade. I tried to keep a running estimate of the number of beings, then gave up. “What’s the current population?”
“As of this hour, fifteen thousand, nine hundred twenty-one, not counting the new captives arriving from Overlord TssVar’s fleet.”
It was a staggering figure. More surprising was the number of empty cells I saw-the Hsktskt could easily hold three times as many prisoners.
Each tier had its own administration chamber and services units, which were manned by supervised prisoners. My escort informed me that Hsktskt guards routinely prowled the corridors, so daily counts were considered unnecessary. Besides, where would anyone go? As we went along, one thing began to really bother me.
At last I had to ask. “Where are the medical facilities?”
My companion swiveled one yellow eye toward me. “There are none.”
“None?” I was appalled. “What do you do if they get sick, or hurt?” He didn’t answer me, only fingered his weapon. Pain began gathering at my temples as I processed that. “Right. Take me to OverMaster HalaVar.”
Reever’s chambers occupied a tier in an enclosed, heavily guarded structure beyond the prisoner stockade. I found him there, deep in discussion over something with OverLord TssVar.
“Where is my cat?”
“He is waiting for you in your chambers.”
Now that I knew Jenner was safe, I got right down to business. “There’s not so much as an medsysbank in this place, but you’re drugging prisoners. Why?”
“I see you have completed your tour of the facility,” Reever said.
“Yeah, I have.” I pushed a chair out of my way. “Don’t you know what the side effects are from long-term exposure to chemical inhibitors?”
TssVar looked from me to Reever, who was busy inputting data on a console unit. “I remind you, HalaVar, not to neglect her training further.”
“Space my training!” I thrust a hand through my hair. “You’re sterilizing them!” The big Hsktskt regarded me with that only too familiar tolerant expression. “This has to stop.”
My ex-bondmate indicated the only other chair in the room. “Sit down, Cherijo.”
“No thanks.” I paced back and forth in front of TssVar. “There’s no excuse for deliberately harming these prisoners like this. None.”
Reever finished whatever he was fooling with and rose. “OverLord, it would be to our advantage to have Dr. Torin administer to the needs of the slave population.”
“Indeed.”
The abrupt turnaround made me stop and gape for a moment. “Wait a minute. Excuse me if I looked interested. I’m not. Nor am I drugging them for you.”
“Any slave found physically or psychologically unfit for trade auction is terminated,” the Hsktskt Commander said.
All at once the chemical inhibitors didn’t seem so bad. “I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before, but you guys are real humanitarians.”
TssVar was ignoring me now. “I will allow it, HalaVar. See that she is put to work at once.”
I lost it as soon as the beast went out the door panel. “I’m not working for you or the Hsktskt!”
“That is your choice.” Reever input one last signal, then came around the console. “Unhealthy or damaged slaves will continue to be put to death.”
Hale and hearty slavery, or meaningless extermination. And all up to me. “That’s not fair. You can’t make me responsible for that kind of decision.”
“What about the Chakacat? OverSeer FurreVa? The League captives?”
“Alunthri?” The last of the safe haze I’d been co-cooned in evaporated. “Where is it? What did you do to it?”
“Come with me.” Reever took my arm and guided me out the door panel.
A few minutes later we entered a chamber in the center of the prisoner tiers. There was an impressive amount of diagnostic apparatus and instruments set up, waiting to be used.
Medical equipment.
“You must have been rather confident I’d agree.” I noticed the many different types of tech, jumbled together and badly in need of proper organization. “Do Hsktskt raiders routinely take anything that isn’t nailed down?”
“Yes.”
I thought of the avaricious traders I’d known back on K-2. “They should go into business with the Bartermen.” One of the Lok-Teel blobs slid up against my ankle and I shuddered and shook it off. “First order of business: get rid of this fungal infestation.”
“It does no harm.” Reever took something from his pocket and tossed it on the floor. A tiny piece of dried fish-something I usually fed Jenner as a treat. The fungus immediately flowed over it and a moment later rolled off to start climbing a wall. The fish was gone. “It ingests most organic material, including natural waste products.”
Which explained the lack of disposal units, and made me decide never to go to sleep in the presence of a blob. “How does it feel about living beings?”
“Touch it for yourself and see.”
Curiosity would eventually kill the surgeon, I thought, but walked over to the wall anyway. I started with a fingertip, and the pleasant, warm-silky texture I encountered made me murmur in surprise.
“It feels... odd.” Like flesh instead of a botanical.
Soon I had my whole hand pressed carefully against the blob, and jerked back only momentarily when it looked as if it was going to envelop my fingers. Instead, it gave me what felt like an amoebic version of a caress, then flowed out from under my hand.
“Very strange.” Inexplicably soothed by the contact, I inspected the gear around me. “All right. I’ll need a pharmaceutical synthesizer, a half dozen nurses, and more berths. That’s for starters.”
“I can give you everything but the synthesizer, for now.”
He didn’t trust me. Reever, who’d lied and cheated and betrayed me, was worried I might try something with the drugs.
“Get me a synthesizer and post a guard.” Before he could say anything more, I shook my head. “It’s not negotiable.”
I noticed the lack of heavy equipment, thought immediately of FurreVa and gave him a few more items for the list.
“I need a reinforced exam table for the Hsktskt, and special transport for FurreVa’s infants. Bring them down in those incubators, too. They should stay in them for a few more weeks.”
“You intend on treating the Hsktskt?”
“Why not?” The question astonished me. “Reever, we’ve had this conversation before, remember? I’ll treat anyone, for anything, any time. That’s what I do.”
“So you have said.”
The odd expression on his face annoyed me, so I picked up a data chart and began programming it to keep a running list of necessary requisitions.
“Where’s Alunthri?”
“On the Perpetua, awaiting transport.”
“Have it
transported soon. Get moving, will you? I’ll have to get to routine physicals for all the prisoners, but have the centurons bring the sick ones first, two at a time. And make that a dozen nurses.”
Once he was gone, I shuffled some equipment around to make more work space and performed an item-by-item inventory. The numbness was gone, and my headache got worse, but I wasn’t sorry about that.
It was time to get back to work.
Several weeks after I’d arrived on the Hsktskt Faction slave-depot, I’d seen nearly a third of all the prisoners, requisitioned most of what I needed, and trained my nursing staff on how to assess and triage as the patients streamed in.
Dchêm-os had been the first nurse assigned to me, much to our mutual displeasure. “For you, I will not work,” she said the moment the Hsktskt guard shoved her through the door panel.
I didn’t like her, but she was the best nurse on the Perpetua. I needed someone who could handle the patients without running to me every five seconds.
I knew what to say. “I don’t want you here either, but I don’t get a choice in how they punish me.”
That pleased Zella, from the way her ear fur perked up. “Stay, then I will.”
FurreVa reported with her brood, whose conditions were stabilized, and informed me she’d been temporarily stripped of her rank.
“I remain restricted from duty, until the young are fully ambulatory,” she said as I checked over her back.
“I need you off your feet for more grafts. Once those have healed, I’ll start the work on your face.” I checked the database, but even here Hsktskt medical data was decidedly scanty. “How long until the kids are up on their limbs?”
“A few days, perhaps a week.”
It beat the heck out of Terran infants, who took forty times that long to walk. “Get TssVar to assign someone to help you. Someone with thick skin. I’ll set up a chamber for you to stick close to the infirmary.” I handed her a data chart. “Study this. It details all the surgery I’m planning to do. You need to know everything before we get started.”
She examined the chart for a moment. “Why?”
“Because once I cut, there’s no turning back. Okay?”
She set down the data chart. “I know you arranged for TssVar to discover my unauthorized interrogations.”
“Yeah, I did. Then I found out you didn’t actually interrogate any of those prisoners. Why did you lie about it?”
She ignored my question. “You do this surgery to assuage your guilt.”
One of us might as well be honest. “That’s part of it.” I did something extremely stupid then. I lifted my hand and gently touched the terrible scar. “I’m a healer. You need to be healed.”
She could have taken off a few fingers with one quick snap. Yet all FurreVa did was stare down at me, hiss something, then leave.
Progress, I guessed.
Although most of the prisoners were kept in their cells, a few were allowed to move through the compound corridors without escorts. I learned that those who did had to wear the darker orange “trustee” tunics to indicate they were performing some necessary function, like the sanitation crews and meal distributors.
Not all of them performed their assigned tasks, naturally.
I noticed shadows moving behind a privacy screen in the back of the infirmary. Since no inpatients were currently assigned to that particular berth, I went back to investigate.
“Hello?” I swept the partition aside. “May I help... what are you doing?”
A silly question, considering the position of the two beings on the berth. Tendrils and body parts jerked apart. A feminine squeak of dismay trilled out. Then a masculine grunt of displeasure.
“Okay, you two,” I crossed my arms and sighed. “Let’s go. Break it up.”
The male, a being of small stature, whipped his multiple tendrils as he swept a length of linen over the naked object of his affections. A beaklike orifice in place of a mouth snapped open and shut a few times, while close-set eye stems glared at me.
“Do you mind?” He slid off the berth and stepped up to me. “We were making cohesion.”
Cohesion. That was a new term for it. Someone had been palming their daily ration of chemical inhibitor.
“You’re messing up my inpatient berth.” I tossed his trousers and orange tunic at him, then pulled the partition back in place. “Get dressed.”
They appeared a few minutes later. The female was slightly larger than the male, and had a belligerent set to her otherwise softer features.
She got in my face, too. “We weren’t doing anything wrong. We have made cohesion before.”
I ran a scanner over her and checked my readings, which told me exactly what I’d suspected. Adolescent Forharees, just coming into their fertile phase.
Teenagers in lust.
“Okay, kids. What are your names?”
“I am Jgrap. This is Kroni.” The male sounded suspicious. “Why do you wish to know our names?”
“So I can track down your parents and have them ground you both for a few revolutions.”
The teenagers looked puzzled, and I sighed again.
“Want to know what the guards will do if they catch you two playing twine-the-tendrils?” Both sets of eye stems looking at me arched. “You don’t want to do this. Not here. Trust me.”
“We would rather die together than live apart,” Jgrap said in a passionate tone, weaving his longest tendril around his girlfriend. They both fairly quivered with the dramatic conviction of young love.
I needed an antacid tablet.
“Nobody is going to die.” I put aside my scanner. “Get back to your tiers, and don’t let the guards see you leave together.” I held up a hand when they would have hurried past me. “No more cohesion. Especially not in here.”
“Very well,” Kroni said as she went by. She had a sweet, lilting voice. “We will find another place.”
The antacid didn’t help.
I continued to work every day for as many hours as I could stay on my feet, then was escorted under guard to my chamber. It was conveniently located around the corner from the infirmary, and isolated from the rest of the prisoner population. Someone had placed a prep unit and a rather comfortable cot in the small cell, which made it tolerable.
The first day I left the infirmary, I found Jenner waiting for me. I picked him up for a joyous cuddle, and looked into his disgruntled blue eyes.
You left me alone with that cold-eyed one who never pets me.
“Sorry, pal.” I buried my face in his fur. “I’ve been sleepwalking for a while.”
Well, wake up. I’m hungry.
Alunthri was delivered back in its cage, and it took half a shift before I could convince the guards to leave it alone. I requisitioned a separate chamber near my own and used the excuse of continuing therapy.
“You may have to keep up the wild animal act,” I told my friend when I relayed the news.
“E-e-e-e-e-e R-r-r-r-r,” the Chakacat said with a yowl, then cocked its bullet-shaped head. “I’m afraid the guards no longer find me very convincing, Cherijo.”
“Try to look meaner.”
“How is this?” Alunthri gave me a realistic snarl, baring lots of teeth, then dissolved into purrs of delight when I took an automatic step back. “I will take that as a yes.”
It became apparent that the nurses and I couldn’t handle the daily caseload, so Reever allowed me to draft Vlaav Irde and two more interns. When the number of patients leveled off, then began inexplicably dropping, I didn’t volunteer to send any of them back.
My earnest young intern worried about that. Constantly.
“They won’t sell us if we do a good job, right?” Vlaav asked me as he scanned a patient with a low-grade fever.
Lying to him would only make it worse. “They can sell us any time they feel like it, pal.”
I finished suturing my patient’s multiple lacerations and inspected my handiwork. The Capel-du suture laser I had to use seemed
primitive compared to League tech, but still did a fairly good job.
“How did you get these injuries?” I asked the humanoid, who had remained silent throughout the treatment.
The patient said nothing, only stared at the Hsktskt guard standing just inside the door panel.
Only a handful of prisoners had appeared for treatment that day, and I was beginning to wonder if the Hsktskt were preventing them from reporting. Making a scene about it wouldn’t help, I decided, and wrote up the discharge notes.
“I want to see you back here in the morning.”
He muttered something that sounded like “crying chambers,” rose and then hobbled out.
Crying in his chambers? I’d done some of that myself.
The resident Lok-Teel got busy on the exam table as soon as the patient left. It had taken some getting used to, watching the blobs scour everything the moment it got dirty, but even I couldn’t deny the benefits.
I’d scanned the fungus and found it exuded its waste products in a gaseous form which had the additional plus of acting as a stringent antiseptic on all surfaces.
“Who’s next?”
The prisoner who would have reported was shoved aside, and two cenrurons hauled a third through the door panel.
“Doctor, this male has been injured.”
That he had, considering the amount of blood he was dripping all over the floor. One of his limbs hung at an unnatural angle. I directed them to the exam table. Scanning revealed multiple compound fractures along the upper half of the Hsktskt’s limb.
I checked his airways. “What hit him?”
“He was attacked by a slave.”
“Some attack.” The cenrurons flanked the table and got in my way. “You two can go. I’ll take care of him.”
“You can’t help him!” someone said.
I looked around at the patient the Hsktskt had knocked aside. He was still sprawled on the floor. “I beg your pardon?”
“How can you even think about giving them aid?” The prisoner got up and jerked the edge of his tunic up. A big, ugly bruise darkened the flesh over his rib cage. “Look at what they did to me!”
One of the centurons shuffled forward and raised a limb with the apparent intention of adding more contusions to the angry prisoner’s torso.