Tina put down the scanner and looked up at Miranda with tears in her eyes, “I used to daydream that you would come home and stick up for me and make all the mean kids cry, like they made me cry. I guess I don’t need that anymore, but I am still really glad you’re finally here.” Tina reached out and started to wrap her arms around Miranda. Halfway through the motion Tina went stiff and limp at the same time. She grunted once then collapsed into unconsciousness on the floor.
“Ben!” Miranda shouted, but needn’t have. He was in the room and lifting Tina to the bed almost as quickly as she fell. Tina twitched and Miranda thought she could see Tina’s face growing and changing before her eyes. “What’s happening?”
“Don’t you know? Even I can guess, she’s begun her metamorphosis. I’ll go get Gene,” Ben started for the door, but that too was unnecessary.
Gene quickly bustled inside with two assistant medics. When Ben shot him a confused look Gene quickly spoke, “Her remote pin was rigged to keep track of her vitals and notify me when her metamorphosis began. Given the abnormalities already present, I thought it best I get here quickly. Just in case of complications.” Gene grabbed the scanner Tina had dropped and began using it on the girl-woman. Then he covered her with a blanket and nodded at one of his helpers. Beneath the blanket Tina’s clothes vanished.
Miranda watched both Gene and Tina intently, she was openly curious. She didn’t remember her own metamorphosis, and Ben hadn’t gone through one for her to share his memories of it. What she saw, the spasmodic, rapid and uneven growth of muscles and bones, the stretching followed by the growth of skin, the anguished expressions passing across Tina’s maturing face, all made Miranda glad she couldn’t remember.
After some time had passed since the last convulsive growth spasm, Gene pocketed the scanner uttered a satisfied grunt, “She’ll be fine. She just needs to rest.”
Miranda looked at her emaciated sister, “You sure?”
“Yes, we’ll put her on a nutritive drip and she’ll fill out just fine. If we didn’t she would wake up and stuff her face full of food, but it would be just as well if she slept.” Gene answered while supervising the placement of an IV drip. “Now scat you two!” Gene shoved Ben and Miranda out in the hall. Miranda noticed Daniel and Angela sitting in the waiting room. Angela’s eyes followed Miranda’s approach.
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Ben felt like his head was swimming. Between the high of finding out just how much Miranda loved him, and the happy shock of Tina’s sudden metamorphosis, Ben didn’t think things could get any better. What worried him was all the possible ways this perfect day could turn out. Since he had found out first and second hand just how dark the universe could be, these bright spots in it made him strangely nervous.
On reaching the waiting room with Miranda, it seemed his nerves were justified. Just as they stepped up to Angela and Daniel, to pass on the good news, Angela leapt out of her chair. She groped around in her back pocket and pulled out a small pop-pad, which was vibrating violently.
“Go,” She grunted into it. Then as she listened and watched, her expression shifted to the stern impersonal one Ben had come to recognize as her >not good news face’. “Thanks, I’ll send someone immediately. No, not Erica, she’d draw too much attention.”
Angela slapped the screen and lowered the pad. Beside her Daniel rose and wrapped a casually supportive arm around her waist. “Honey, we can go, Ben and I.”
“What about me?” Miranda blurted quickly, not quite holding in her sudden panic. Ben sensed her fear of being alone, telepathically. He gently tried to soothe her mind. Immediately she shut him out, slamming up her shields and pulling physically away. He shook his head. Gently, he placed his hand on her arm. He berated himself for allowing himself to think her weak and in need of his protection. She lowered her guard and allowed him to place an arm around her waist.
Daniel, nodded silently at Ben, the slight turn at the corner of his mouth revealing comprehension of the exchange. “Or I could go alone,” Daniel offered.
Ben watched Angela stiffen, and he actively began to wonder if any sort of compromise could be reached. Then Angela looked into Miranda’s eyes, “No, You and Ben both go, Miranda should stay to be here when Tina wakes up, and I should check in with the control center.” She handed the pad to Daniel and left the room stiffly.
“Shall we?” Daniel asked gesturing towards the door after his wife.
Ben took a long look at Miranda’s face, which offered a disinterested expression. “Duty calls,” Ben mumbled inanely in her direction, then with a quick squeeze he followed Daniel into the hall.
“Congratulations, I assume that you are unaware that, according to the briaunti customs of many worlds, you’re practically married,” Daniel said abruptly as they left the medical hallway.
Ben tripped over his own feet. “What?” Ben turned to find an unusually serious expression on his friend’s face.
Daniel smiled, “It doesn’t take much to recognize a recently formed pairbond. You probably don’t know this, but according to my world all that’s required is that you approach her father with an offering of money. I bought my brother a wife and they threw Angey in to sweeten the deal. Personally, I’d say Miranda’s worth at least a hundred horns. Though the fact that you’re already bonded would could raise it to a thousand. Of course neither you nor Nathan would go that route, but I believe your customs aren’t all that different. First you ask him for her hand. Then, crazily enough you ask her.” Daniel smirked revealing there was at least some jest in his words.
“You, bought Angela?”
“No, I got her as a freebie, I bought my brother a fifty horn virgin for two hundred horns.”
Ben wrestled with that tidbit for a while in silence.
“It’s hard to be mated to strong women,” Daniel began again, “They think they can’t afford to have a weakness. I know Miranda’s reasons aren’t the same as Angela’s, and I also know that for the moment Angela would like to dump her reasons on Miranda. Angey will snap out of it, mostly it’s her shock at the whole Ellen thing. Anyway, enough dwelling on the women, we have a job to do.” Daniel tapped the pad dredging up the particulars of their assignment.
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Chapter 24
What’s Up Doc?
-----------------------------------
Miranda shifted her weight from foot to foot. Her head ached, felt softly wrapped in wool, and was silently empty all at the same time. She glanced towards Gene and wondered if he could give her anything for it. Her eyes twitched to her parents, sitting in a pair of chairs. Then her eyes drifted up to the ceiling. The waiting was almost as bad as her headache.
Slamming her hand abruptly against her thigh, Miranda started towards Gene. “How much longer?”
Gene looked up at her with a blurred expression. Miranda could almost see him struggling to grasp what she was talking about. “Oh,” He clucked finally tracing his thoughts, “I haven’t the foggiest idea when she’ll wake up. She’ll wake up when she wakes up. A metamorphosis is very strenuous. It takes almost all of a body’s reserves to go through such a rapid growth spurt. It’s not just physically taxing either. It can leave a person emotionally and mentally spent, what with having to assimilate all the encapsulated memories the new synapses suddenly offer access to.”
Gene subsided, returning his focus to his pop-pad, the hand-held microcomputer interface, on which he updated his patient files.
Miranda glared at the top of his head, not quite so easily satisfied. “For this I stayed behind! I could have gone with Ben and been back in plenty of time to be here when Tina wakes up! Why can’t I just go in and sit with her!”
Gene sighed and set aside his work, “You probably should be in bed yourself. You aren’t fully recovered from Ellen’s telepathic meltdown.”
“You were getting ready to discharge me when Tina collapsed,” Miranda parried.
Gene
stood. “Not to go out and implode your mind with your boyfriend. It would be good for Tina to have her sister and mother here when she wakes up. She’ll have a lot to adjust to, but sitting with her as she tries to recover from her own personal mental tornado would probably just make things worse. Now go sit down or so help me I’ll call Angela and half a dozen watchers to strap you down!” Gene growled and jabbed a finger towards a chair in the corner.
He stood firm and glared until Miranda started for the corner. Miranda sunk into the chair and into herself. Gene had scolded her like a child. She hadn’t even been scolded like a child when she was a child. In all her memories of growing up in the dark compound, not once did they scold her. That wasn’t how the dark did things, especially not Dichen. There were beatings, conditioning sessions, even some torture. The dark didn’t scold they punished, or exacted revenge. Miranda dwelt on the negative, momentarily forgetting that none of that mattered anymore. She had escaped and found her family.
“He didn’t mean to be so mean,” a feminine voice broke through Miranda’s self torment. It took Miranda some time to recognize it as her mother’s voice.
Miranda looked up at her mother, a relative stranger thanks to the dark, and asked herself who the woman really was. Penelope, Miranda associated her mother’s face with that name more intimately than with the word >mother’, hesitantly reached a hand out to touch Miranda’s shoulder. Miranda stiffened, she didn’t know how to react to the comforting gesture. To her credit, Penelope didn’t withdraw.
“Miranda, I wish I could have been there for you, or instead of you. I died inside when you disappeared. Eventually I had Tina, but she wasn’t you. I’m glad you’re here, and safe.” Penelope patted Miranda’s shoulder and took a nearby chair.
Penelope’s words frustrated Miranda, instead of providing comfort as intended. From the way it sounded Miranda thought Penelope was prying into her thoughts telepathically. That brought on a confused rage. Miranda hadn’t felt such telepathic stillness since her captivity in the sensory deprivation tank. Thinking back to that experience chilled her. Miranda couldn’t face the memory for long. She had come too close to dissolving into the abyss.
Penelope patted Miranda again, this time on the back, “Everything will be all right. Gene already told us Tina would be okay, and he isn’t wrong often.”
Miranda nodded. She would be better off worrying about Tina, rather than dwelling on things past. Miranda looked up at Gene, who was pacing the room. Lightheartedly she wondered if he could remember why he stood up. He wasn’t stupid or anything like that. He just became easily preoccupied with other things. Finally, Gene sat down again and picked his pad back up, just in time for the an indicator light from Tina’s room to blink on. Miranda leapt to her feet, and started for Tina’s room, but Gene’s blank glare told her to sit back down until he told her to move. Miranda sat.
Gene fiddled with his pop-pad for a moment, “She should be waking up within the next few minutes. You two can go in and see her now, but don’t tire her!”
Miranda rose, respectfully and made her way slowly down the hall. Her mother followed a few steps behind. Miranda reached the door to Tina’s room first.
“I can’t go in there,” Penelope whispered, “What if she hasn’t... What if she isn’t a telepath?”
Miranda turned and looked at her mother. It seemed so ridiculous, “What difference does that make?”
“If she still isn’t telepathic she’ll never be anything. I just can’t go in there and face it. You go. You find out,” Penelope hedged.
Miranda shook her head. “She’s Gene’s assistant, isn’t that something? She will be Gene’s assistant telepathy or no. Besides how am I going to tell in my condition whether or not she’s a telepath?”
“Just go in without me, I can’t,” Penelope fled back to the waiting room.
Miranda hesitated too, until her curiosity caught up with her. She wasn’t curious just about Tina's telepathic state. Miranda also wanted to know about what a metamorphosis was like, and about the much discussed Briaunti memories. Miranda pushed through her hesitation and tapped the door pad. The door slid open and Miranda stepped through into the room.
Miranda glanced around the familiar room. She glanced at the digital readout on the wall behind the bed, then down at Tina's still sleeping face, obscured by an unruly mop of hair. Yesterday Miranda had occupied the bed and Tina had been in Miranda’s position. Miranda walked to the chair beside the bed with a blanket draped over the back. She thought of it as Tina's chair. The first time Miranda saw Tina, the girl, now a woman, had been asleep in it.
Miranda sat and looked at the bed. There was no denying the fact that Tina had grown, by Miranda’s reckoning at least a foot and a half probably closer to two feet. Tina would now be very near Miranda’s height, perhaps a little taller. Miranda marveled at the change less than a day had made. She also noted how thin Tina appeared beneath the blanket and the straps which bound her to the bed.
Miranda remembered being strapped to the bed, weak and confused after a torture session, shortly before she escaped from the darkones. The next time she woke up she was a woman. At the time it had been a little confusing, but she had figured they’d kept her in the torture room a long time. Now Miranda recognized the truth and wondered why she couldn’t remember the >memories’ Gene talked about.
“Hmm,” Tina stirred in the bed, moaning slightly as she drew closer to consciousness.
The closer Tina came to awake the more quickly Miranda shuffled through her own experiences. Perhaps Miranda searched for a common ground on which to start the conversation with her sister, now more than ever a total stranger. Tina's eyes fluttered, very near opening. A thought slammed into Miranda; she didn’t know what to do with her hands.
Tina's eyes exploded open, and darted around. “Where am I?” her voice came out dry, hoarse.
Miranda dropped her hands in her lap, “The clinic.”
Tina started to push herself up from the mattress, and clearly became aware of the padded restraints. “What in the heck is going on! Why am I strapped down! Let me up!” Tina commanded in a husky still hoarse voice.
Miranda felt like she was lifted from her chair by the bruised fog that lingered in her head. She shuffled to the bed, before realizing she meant to, and went about the slow but simple task of unfastening the padded cuffs from Tina's wrists. The hand dilemma solved, Miranda still didn’t have a clue how to carry forward the dialog. “How do you feel?” Miranda asked remembering from somewhere the suggestion to stick to the subjects of health and weather in awkward conversations. That memory confused her, the voice belonged to a man which Miranda couldn’t remember.
Tina threw aside the blanket, and reached to unfasten her ankles with her newly freed hands. She cleared her throat. “I’d feel worlds better if you’d tell me what’s going on,” Tina stopped and grasped her throat as though she too could hear the difference in her voice.
“I think you have an idea,” Miranda gawked at the naked body her sister had revealed by throwing aside the blankets. By the instant Tina's gaunt frame filled out. Miranda followed tubing from an IV in Tina's ankle back to the wall and thought about how much it seemed that tube was blowing her sister up like a balloon.
“For the love of Pete! Sticking tubes in me and won’t even tell me what’s going on. Instead of staring could you could get me my clothes!” Tina yanked out the IV and pulled the blanket’s up to cover her breasts.
“They won’t fit anymore.” Miranda handed Tina her clothes from where they lay on the floor.
“Don’t be silly,” Tina tried to pull her shirt over her head. When that failed she unbuttoned it and started to slip it on that way. It wouldn’t close around her breasts. Tina flung the shirt and the rest of the pile at Miranda. “Just get me some clothes!”
Miranda picked up the pile and shuffled out the door. Once the door hissed closed behind her, Miranda felt much more herself, even though she hadn’t noticed not feeling like
herself. Miranda shook her head to clear it and went directly to Gene with the pile of ill fitting garments. She dropped Tina's old clothes in Gene’s lap. “These don’t fit anymore, and she’s throwing a fit about wanting clothes now. She also yanked out the IV.”
Gene looked up from his pop-pad, “Okay, I’ll have a gown waiting in the delivery cupboard. Tell her to put the IV back, and explain what happened.”
“What if she won’t put the IV back?” Miranda asked.
“Tell her the ravenous hunger will subside as long as she behaves and puts it back,” Gene answered in even tones as his attention shifted back to his work, using the pile of clothes as an armrest.
Miranda turned around, exasperated at not having received anything she considered helpful, and noticed Penelope. Penelope clutched at her husband’s hand and looked at Miranda hopefully. Miranda smiled at them before turning on her heels to return to Tina. Miranda entered the room and had to duck immediately to avoid an apple core flung haphazardly in her direction. Tina wore a plain hospital gown and frantically ordered and consumed food from the dispenser.
“Tina, Gene told me to tell you to put the IV back in.” Miranda felt herself cringe back within herself as Tina turned, aiming a glare at her.
“Too hungry!”
“The IV will make you less hungry. Gene said it would make it go away,” Miranda felt like she had to fight her way through a brick wall just to bring the tube to Tina.
Tina hesitated before attaching the tube carefully to the back of her hand. She devoured half a pizza before she stopped eating. Miranda looked at the mess on her sister and the floor, consisting of wrappers, rinds and half eaten food. Then she really looked at her sister. Tina was indeed a few inches taller than Miranda now, but not so much so that they didn’t see nearly eye to eye.
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