Touch of Danger (Three Worlds)

by Strickland, Carol A.

  She used her breath to help clear it, visualizing her breathing as the kind of energy breathing that the chakra did. Occasionally she'd lean in against it, wrapping her arms around the perimeter of the chakra as if she leaned on a large invisible sphere. She seemed like she was listening, and then she'd rap on one spot. Or she'd hum or sing a note.

  While she was doing that, Wiley hovered around Londo applying small stickers to his chest and switching on vari-colored lines of lights. Since Lina wasn't touching Londo directly, his skin held the hardness of metal. A readout showed Wiley that that wasn't quite as hard as usual: iron instead of impervion, soapstone instead of granite. But it was hard enough. Invulnerability did have its drawbacks in medical emergencies.

  Wiley stopped and stared when Lina sang, but after a moment he went back to what he was doing—although he muttered to himself about Terrans. When he was finished, he returned to his seat at a central console next to Jae and kept track of five different screens at once.

  Finally Lina leaned back in the chair and let her breath out in a heavy sigh. “Only one chakra and I need to go in for another dunk.” She turned to Wiley and Jae, her audience. “First one's the hardest.”

  “His readings have definitely improved,” Wiley confirmed for her benefit. “I'm reassigning his condition from grave to critical.” Her swollen face twisted into what might have been an expression of relief.

  “Wiley, I've been thinking,” Jae said when she had gone. “Wasn't 'Glasti' the name of some ancient world goddess here at some point?”

  “Yes, it was. The question is: if she's Terran, how does she know? My readings confirm that they may indeed have transported directly from Earth. Contamination levels are very inconsistent with hyperspace travel. Conventional hyperspace travel, I should say.”

  “Any diseases we're not covered for?”

  Wiley harrumphed. “I haven't had time to research that, but I don't think we'll collapse before I can spot everything. I should have preliminary vaccinations ready by this evening. Even for our Terran guest.”

  “It would be nice if Gorgeon were here.”

  “Oh yes, as if we're too busy now,” Wiley said sourly. He hated being hardly more than an observer. He liked to test, to do his own lab work for major studies. “We really need another body sitting around in quarantine.”

  “I just mean she should look at Londo, too. As a backup,” Jae added quickly so Wiley wouldn't take it as a professional insult. “I suppose Stoan's going to classify this as triple-level-5 anyway.”

  “Only double so far,” Wiley pointed at a security warning on a nearby screen. “We'd have to mind-wipe Gorgeon if she saw any of this.”

  “That's not right.”

  “Those are the rules, Jae. I already sent Stoan a memo asking for a Need to Know exception for her.” Wiley quietly busied himself with ordering new readouts as his companion sat in silence.

  Jae finally said, “So the biggest question is…”

  Wiley couldn't hide his grin. “Who had this month on the betting boards?”

  They snickered together.

  Chapter 7

  Lina made it through two more chakras before she had to return to the tank to de-energize. Then two more and the tank. This time when she returned, they could see that she trembled and had to catch onto tables for balance as she walked back to Londo's side.

  “Here,” Wiley said, and administered another shot as she braced herself against Lon's table. She straightened up, nodded, and went back to work. The final two chakras took as long as the three before them. Her hands quivered at the end of the procedure as she re-covered Lon with what Wiley could only see was air.

  After submitting herself to the tank again, she found Jae working on Lon. Lina decided to let him work for a few minutes and sank onto a stool, looking expectantly at Wiley.

  “His signs now are critical but stable. I'd say you could get a couple hours of sleep if you wanted.”

  She rubbed her eyes. “Yeah, I want. But they say” (Wilder wondered who they were) “I need to go right into the Kolaimni. A normal one takes about thirty, forty minutes.” She eyed the small marble that floated above her. “Can that translate Terran time units?” She didn't think Wiley really knew all the English that he pretended to know. After all, they were—where the hell were they, anyway? How could anyone know English Out Here?

  “It did. Forty minutes.”

  “All right. That's for a normal Kolaimni. This one's going to take a lot longer. Two, maybe three hours.” She gazed at Lon but spoke to Wiley. “Can I get some more of that stimulant from you? I need an absolutely clear mind for this technique.”

  “Yes. But I don't recommend you stay on stims in your condition.”

  “And could I bother you for a little more painkiller? I really need to use both arms. But just enough to let me use the arm fairly normally, not make me spacey. Like I said, absolutely clear mind. And some water if I could, please. If it's not too much trouble.”

  Wiley set off to get the drugs. “Thanks,” Lina called after him. She pushed herself up to stand next to Jae and blearily watched him work. Whatever he was doing, the femurs liked it. They were producing red blood cells as hard as they could, given their low energy levels. Was Jae increasing the levels by some power of his or was he merely encouraging the bones to accomplish the job themselves? She began to ask the bones by anthropomorphizing them in her imagination so she could understand them.

  “Don't interrupt,” Jae said softly.

  “Sorry.” She hadn't thought he'd even noticed her. Stifling her curiosity, she watched for a few more minutes until it seemed he was through. He turned and brushed his hands off, ridding himself of the excess toxic energy. It didn't quite clear him; Lina wondered if he knew. But he'd clear out eventually. Just look at the glow around him.

  “I hope you don't take this the wrong way,” she said slowly, “but I've never seen an aura like yours. Not that I've seen that many auras. I'm kind of spacey right now.”

  “What do you mean? No, I'm familiar with the concept of auras. Why is mine unusual?”

  She peered at him. The world had begun to dissolve into the immaterial. Realizing that he had asked her a question, she explained, “It's pretty big. Very white in places, very spiritual. And all the people around you—”

  “People?”

  “Thousands—millions of people crowding around you. A planetful.”

  Jae froze but she continued, oblivious to his reaction.

  “They're all, like, patting you and saying don't be sad. Don't weep for us. Don't mourn for her when she lives in you.”

  “Who?”

  “Somebody named…Feith. She says she's alive in you. What does it mean? Who is she? I can barely hear her.”

  Jae pressed his lips tightly together and turned his back.

  Wilder chose that moment to return. He waved his equipment near Lina's neck. There was that prickling heat for a moment. Lina blinked, took a breath and then released it, her eyes opening wide. “Hello, real world! That did the trick, thanks.” The water he gave her was the best she'd drunk in her life.

  Wiley adjusted the bubble gum in the armature on her bad arm as she wiped the sweat out of her eyes. She flexed the arm experimentally. Now she could move it through almost a complete range of motion. “Thanks a lot,” she told him.

  But she paused before she went back to Lon and glanced back at Jae. Now that she was alert, the only aura she could detect was a faint afterimage around him, and even that could have been her imagination. “I'm sorry. I shouldn't channel unless I'm absolutely clear. Never upset the client, that's the first rule.”

  Jae turned slightly, acknowledging her presence once again. He brushed away the hair that had fallen into his face, tried to smile and didn't make it. “I'm not upset. It's okay.”

  “We'll talk after I get through with this. After I get some sleep. Can you wait that long?”

  Only when he nodded did she take her position next to Lon. “If he wakes u
p and tries to speak, get him to be quiet until I'm done,” she instructed them. “Somebody remind me to do the end ritual; I always forget that part.”

  The latter request was not directed at either of them. They had gotten used to her talking to the air, although Wiley still made rude remarks under his breath about it.

  Seated at a main monitoring station fifteen feet away, Wiley and Jae watched and sipped hot drinks. With one mind, Wiley began to compile his notes about Londo into a report as another mind compared data from an experimental trial he'd started some of his assistants on in Lab 1-C, some forty stories below this one. His other minds observed the Kolaimni process and commented to Jae.

  Jae didn't reply. Instead he scratched his chest, then his shoulder, then the back of his head as he took deep but shaky breaths. Wiley's youngest mind noticed when Jae tapped a pattern on his wrist to trigger the release of internal tranquilizers.

  That mind nodded to the others; Jae had been controlling his manic depression on his own for years. It was to be expected that Londo being so near death would cause him anxiety. Now Jae seemed to be relaxing. He was taking expert care of himself. Wiley should be using all his assigned faculties to study Londo's reaction to this strange technique.

  Lina's fingers stroked the air as if there were a surface some six to eight inches from Lon's body. She began at one of his feet and very slowly progressed up. The other leg got the same treatment. Wiley's main desk monitor held a detailed overview of Lon's condition, and the indicators changed their readings radically as Lina's hands passed over each area.

  “I have absolutely no idea what she's doing, but she's certainly doing it well.” Wiley pointed out the changing augmented colors on his charts to Jae. “Look at that.” Before, it had been the entire body gradually improving in condition as she moved down; now the effect was tightly concentrated.

  “Enjoy it, Wiley. When was the last time you had a real witchdoctor doing her thing in front of your sensors? You'll write a book about this, I know.”

  “Probably,” Wiley admitted.

  Heat readings were changing along the healing front, as he'd begun to term the area where Lina worked. It seemed like a miniature weather front, with drastically different readings on either side and turbulence between. He modulated the picture to illustrate other body functions besides temperature.

  Wiley noticed that Lina was arguing to the air and upped the mikes he had on her so he and Jae could hear what she was saying.

  “No,” she protested to the air. “I really don't think I should mess with the major chakras at this point.” She paused. “I know, but these poor chakras have been through so much. Tell you what, what if I skip them this time, do everything but them, and then when I do the second Kolaimni I pay special attention to them? Okay, will do. Thanks.” And she proceeded with the technique, apparently satisfied.

  “Who is she talking to?”

  Jae shrugged his shoulders. “Gods. Spirit guides. Familiars. You can always ask her when she's done. She seems cooperative enough.”

  “That's a major plus. So who won the pool?”

  Jae ran a search through the puter. “Kuttr.” He chuckled a half-snort. “He places his bets in random cycles. This time he had a special rider on it, too: ten percent extra if she were a virgin.”

  “Hm.”

  “What?”

  “Did I say anything?”

  “Are you telling me that she was?” Jae glanced at the very female form in front of them. Imagine it pre-attack. Nah, no way.

  “I fail to see how you got all that from me passing a little gas. I was just taking into consideration the fact that the young lady is a healer, and so certain physical, ah, alterations may appear to be healed longer than they actually are.”

  “So you're saying she was.”

  “So I'm saying that we should ask Londo.” Wiley switched to a new set of data screens. “We may want to question him while he's still a bit dopey. He once told me that a gentleman doesn't kiss and tell.”

  “He's no gentleman.”

  “But he considers himself one.”

  Now Jae's snort was a full one. “But this is Londo Rand we're talking about. Londo 'Poor Me I Can't Have Sex So Everyone Stop Talking About It and Pretend It Doesn't Exist' Rand. He’ll tell everyone about this one. He's going to put up a sign in the main meeting room. Maybe hang one on the outside wall of Headquarters. In flashing lights.”

  “And maybe not. Readings show that in addition to having died, he's just recovered from a major, and I do mean major, previous shock to his entire system.”

  Jae peered at the screen Wiley referred to. Dozens of lines of data streamed across it using obscure bio-physical terms. Golgi body acceleration in the presence of extensive toxiplasmic residue… “What's that mean?”

  “I hate to jump to conclusions—”

  “What a load of—”

  “But it could have been enough to have stripped him of a considerable amount of invulnerability and strength. Remember, she said he'd rescued her without powers. She must have been talking about him, not herself. This may have been a once in a lifetime event—in which case he may not be too pleased about it.”

  New floating sensors leaped to flock into formation around Londo's bed. Wiley frowned as he first widened their focus, then tightened it.

  “Electromagnetic radiation,” he muttered to himself. “Londo but not Lina. I'd have thought that Lon would have been able to throw off almost any kind of… DemGerre.” With that name he flexed his left pinky and the screen on that side began scrolling through a list of technical articles written by said researcher. He narrowed the list to one and perused it with Mind #3.

  “Two years ago,” Mind #2 prompted the computer without stopping. “Lecerate Journal of Medicine, article by Prepoe someone.” The right-hand screen displayed another treatise, this one concerning focused electromagnetic effects on human tissue. Wiley's eyes tracked the screens separately and he grunted. “Grigach take it all,” he finally concluded sourly. “They both reference Tishana research, of all things. That equals a dead end. Sunfire take that world and its censorship!”

  He threw up his hands and shook them toward the ceiling, perhaps even the sky above headquarters. After a moment of strained grunting he lowered them, rolled his shoulders, and then re-aimed his sensors with merely a murmur of new curses.

  Jae tried to make sense of the screens, especially the one that concerned itself with subcellular processes and reconstructive conjecture. He frowned at it as Wiley continued to mumble to himself and motion for resets and new possibilities.

  “Shards, look at that,” Jae said at one set. “How do you drain the power off Valiant? Could he even have gotten it up in that condition?”

  Wiley glanced at what Jae was referring to. “There's stress and then there's stress. I have a model going through one of my minds now that shows Lon in a room, fainting away from weakness, and then this girl walks by.”

  “To which he finds the strength to jump up and say, 'Pardon me, miss, but would you like to have a little sex?'“ Jae grinned to himself. “While he's still dopey, huh?”

  “'He's vulnerable wherever I touch him,' she said.” Both of them snickered at that.

  “Virgin?”

  “Ah… I'd be willing to put down a reasonable amount on the theory.” Wiley switched the screen on his second-left to the Legion betting boards, and let his left eye and Youngest Mind watch it as he did just that. Youngest Mind appreciated that sort of thing more than the others.

  Jae glanced down at his own screen. “Kuttr will be pleased. Not just for the money.”

  “Yes, what is it that he's always telling Londo? 'A man's not a true man until he's bloodied himself with a battle and a virgin girl.'“

  “He just said that to get Lon's goat.”

  “It worked. Drove Lon crazy.” They laughed softly together. And watched.

  Occasionally communication screens lit on their console, and they'd bring whoever was checking in
up to date. To almost every inquiry from their fellow Mega-Legionnaires, Wiley would let slip the fact that he was able to administer medication to Londo because the Terran witchdoctor could manipulate Lon's invulnerability. It was very satisfying to see activity on the betting boards dramatically increase.

  For the most part, Wiley ran scans in different frequencies trying to determine what Lina was doing. Sometimes Jae would suggest Wiley check some aspect and Wiley would re-tune his instruments to catch it. During the two times that Wiley left for a few minutes, taking his screens with him, Jae's gaze focused on the girl herself, and his eyes narrowed into hard slits.

  Lina reached Lon's head two hours into it and paused. “Damn,” she muttered as she shook her arms toward the ground. She wiped the sweat off her forehead and face, trying to use her sopping shirt to soak some of it up. Healing was very hot work sometimes, and this was complicated by the fact that she was straining so hard.

  It didn't help that her good arm was stiffening up on her. She was overcompensating for the other one, which had begun to throb again. It was difficult to move her left fingers. The two Legionnaires strolled over.

  “What's the matter?” Almost offhandedly Wiley administered another two shots to her.

  “I hate to leave in the middle of this, but I need to de-toxify again. He should be flipped over anyway. Could you guys…?”

  Wiley put on a sour expression. “Oh, you mean we get to do something?”

  Jae nudged the older man. “Don't listen to him, Lina. Sure, we can handle him. Is something wrong with your hand?”

  “It's just stiff again. I think I should be able to work it.”

  “Umph,” Wiley grunted and restrung the bubblegum.

  “Oh. Oh,” Lina said, amazed. The feeling returned to her hand, tingling as the arm came back alive. “Hello, fingers!”

  “We need to reroute the nerve signals every hour or so,” Wiley said. “I'll rig a permanent patch later.”

  “Thanks. Be right back.” She trotted off to the tank, leaving the two of them to negotiate turning Londo over. As they hefted him, he groaned and stirred. They rolled him over and he sighed.