Amid the Crowd of Stars

by Stephen Leigh

“No,” Ichiko told her. “It wasn’t what you did. Saoirse, if anything, I’ll take full blame for what’s happened. I shouldn’t have told you anything about how things were going with Lupusians we had brought up to the ship. I shouldn’t have asked you to have your Uncle James show me his cures for the local diseases. I should have kept my mouth shut about all that and just passed along the information to my superiors, but I didn’t. I shouldn’t . . .” There was a pause and hissing of static in Saoirse’s ears. In the com window, Ichiko frowned and there was a strange gleam in her eyes that Saoirse suspected matched her own. “I should never have allowed us to become so close. I should have remained more distant and objective.”

  The words struck Saoirse like soft fists. “How can yeh say that?” Saoirse heard her voice rise and become louder, desperation adding its urgency to her words. She wondered how panicked she must sound to Ichiko. “I thought we were becoming friends, and that’s what I wanted. I thought mebbe yeh wanted that, too.”

  “I did want that, Saoirse. Truly. It’s just . . .” She stopped, cocking her head as if listening to something that Saoirse couldn’t hear—Machiko? Her AMI? she wondered. She saw Ichiko’s shoulders sag as she exhaled. “Saoirse, I’m sorry, but I have to cut this short. The shuttle back to Odysseus is ready to leave, and they’re calling me. We’ll pick this up later, I promise. Don’t beat yourself up over what happened. It wasn’t your fault, and you’ve nothing to apologize for. I want you to know that.”

  “Aye,” Saoirse said, though it did nothing to assuage her guilt. “I’ll talk to yeh later, then.”

  “We will. I promise.”

  Ichiko nodded; the connection vanished.

  “So yeh’ve been hiding that from us.”

  Saoirse turned, startled, to see her mam peering through the slightly opened door of her room. Iona pushed the door open, standing with hands on hips, frowning.

  “Mam . . . I . . .”

  The frown dissolved and her hands left her hips. Iona came fully into the room, shutting the door behind her and sitting on the bed near Saoirse. She glanced at the com-unit sitting on the nightstand, shaking her head. “Saoirse, I don’t care. I know how yeh feel about this Terran woman, and that doesn’t matter to me. I’ll get me grands from Gráinne if yeh never want that yerself. I just don’t want yeh to get hurt chasin’ after something yeh can’t ever have.”

  “How much of that did yeh hear?”

  “Enough to know I’m giving yeh good advice,” her mam said. “Ichiko’s a good person. I believe that, and I can understand why yeh feel about her the way yeh do. But there’s no future for yeh with her. None a’tall.”

  “Yeh don’t know that. Not yet yeh don’t.” Her voice trembled, and she wiped at her eyes.

  “Yer wrong about that. I know and so do yeh. So does everyone here, and now Minister Plunkett and the rest of the mainland clans do, too.” Her mam put her arm around Saoirse’s shoulder and pulled her into an embrace. After momentary resistance, Saoirse let herself fall into the hug, putting her head on her mam’s shoulder. The warmth and comfort broke Saoirse’s reserves. She began to sob as her mam stroked her hair and held her close. “Just let it out,” her mam whispered into her ear. “Yer fine. I have yeh.”

  Sniffing, Saoirse pulled back. “Mam . . .”

  “I know,” Iona said. “Yeh want more of her than just being a friend.”

  “I do, Mam. I just don’t know if she feels the same.”

  “Mebbe she does and mebbe not. If yeh want to know, then yeh need to ask her.” Iona wiped away a tear from Saoirse’s face with a gentle stroke of her thumb. “Or maybe it’s only an infatuation because she’s so different, and yer feelings will eventually pass. Either way, none of that changes the fundamental problem, does it? She’s going to leave, and yeh can’t go with her.”

  * * *

  Chava had been placed in a transparent chamber obviously designed to be just small enough to pass through the shuttle’s air lock. Most of the shuttle’s seats had been taken out to accommodate the chamber and the tanks and other apparatus attached to it, with the chamber placed near the air lock. In one of the remaining seats was a man she didn’t recognize with a lieutenant’s bar on his shoulders and a patch with the Medical Corps’ Rod of Asclepius on the breast of his uniform. He was staring at the readouts on the isolation chamber. A med-bot was inside the chamber, perched next to Chava’s bed. Chava was strapped to the bed, her eyes closed, and there were tubes around her that hadn’t been there before. Ichiko focused her thoughts so that her AMI could hear her.

 

 

  Ichiko went to the chamber as the medic glanced over at her. “Why is she out? She was conscious when I left her.”

  She heard the medic sigh. “Lieutenant Bishara has a lung congestion that was making it increasingly difficult for her to breathe on her own. The locals call it Gray Threads. I had the med-bot put her on a vent for the trip up to the ship, so we’ve sedated her. It seemed best for the moment; when we have her in the med-unit on the ship, we can revisit that decision.”

  “Gray Threads?” Ichiko thought she remembered Rí Angus mentioning that as something potentially deadly; her pulse raced at the thought.

  The medic evidently noticed her distress. “It’s one of the Lupusian diseases. They usually get it in childhood.” He closed his eyes momentarily, evidently listening to his own AMI. “I’m told that an infection used to be 90% fatal, but that they have treatments for it now which has really cut down the fatality rates.”

  “By how much?”

  The medic’s gaze flicked away from Ichiko to the readout before he answered. “From around 90% to about 30 to 40%.” Then he glanced at her again. “Dr. Aguilar, I promise we’ll take excellent care of her. But it’ll be much easier to do that up on Odysseus with all its resources than down here. Right now, Captain Keshmiri wants her there as soon as possible, so if you’ll just take a seat and strap in . . .”

  Ichiko nodded. She took one of the remaining seats near the chamber. There were two other crew members returning to the ship with them, seated at the back of the shuttle as far away from the chamber as they could get. Ichiko strapped herself in as a bell chimed in her head and she felt the ship trembling as the drive units were engaged. the shuttle’s AMI told them.

  Rough was an understatement. The winds of Canis Lupus tore at the shuttle as if wishing to grab it, pull it from the sky, and dash it back down to earth. Ichiko kept looking back to Chava’s isolation chamber; the medic seated alongside looked rather ill himself—Ichiko doubted that he was used to rough shuttle trips, but to his credit he gave Ichiko a thumbs-up when he noticed her attention. When they lifted past the stratospheric winds, the silence and smoothness was a relief, though Ichiko had never relished weightlessness herself. She was grateful for the straps that now kept her tight to her seat.

  A few hours later, they were in the shuttle bay of Odysseus. The shuttle was sprayed with disinfectant while an air lock tube was extended from outside the bay to latch onto the shuttle’s air lock. The inner door of the air lock opened, and a rating stuck his head in along with the familiar odor of the ship. “Welcome home,” he said. He waved to someone behind him and stepped in. Another rating followed him leading a carrier-bot; they set the rubber-treaded body under Chava’s isolation chamber and followed it out through the air lock tube with the medic padding along behind.

  Ichiko rose from her seat and started to follow them to the medical bay, but her AMI chirped before she’d even left the shuttle.

 

 

 


  Ichiko frowned, stopped, and let Chava’s chamber move on ahead. She went to the nearest personnel lift instead. “Bridge level,” she said.

  When the doors opened, she went to the door labeled Bridge Ready Room; it opened as she approached. “Commander, you wanted to see me?” she said as she entered.

  Luciano was the only person inside, dressed in his bridge uniform. “Dr. Aguilar, thanks for coming when I know you’re worried about Lieutenant Bishara,” he said; the careful formality told her that others were listening to their conversation. “Have a seat, please?” Luciano gestured at the chairs arranged around the long glass-topped table. “The captain and Lieutenant Commander Tinubu will be joining us,” he began, but the door yawned open before Ichiko could sit. “Ah, here they are.”

  Ichiko and Luciano both stood as the two entered; Luciano saluted. “Captain. Nagasi,” Ichiko said.

  Captain Keshmiri stood behind the seat next to Luciano and across the table from Ichiko; Nagasi pulled out the chair alongside Ichiko.

  “Please, sit,” Captain Keshmiri said, gesturing to everyone. When everyone was seated, she leaned forward. “Dr. Aguilar, I want you to know that I appreciate your willingness to speak to Minister Plunkett on my behalf. I thought that having you talk to him in person would calm down both the minister and the local population. I was obviously wrong in that assumption. I want you to know that had I harbored any suspicion that there’d be aggression toward you and Lieutenant Bishara as a result, I wouldn’t have made that request. I’m very sorry for what the two of you went through, and especially for what Lieutenant Bishara is now having to endure.”

  “There’s no reason to apologize, Captain. You did what you thought best. And in any case, I don’t know that Minister Plunkett was responsible, though I strongly suspect it.”

  “We’re investigating that now,” Luciano said. His face was grim and almost angry. Ichiko wondered if that was concern for her or simply because that was how he needed to appear. “If the minister did have anything to do with the attack, you can believe that we’ll hold him responsible, as we will anyone we can identify as having taken part. In the eyes of the UPC, the descendants of the original crew we left here are also UPC citizens and thus are subject to our laws. Your flitter’s cameras captured most of the incident; we’re going over that material now. We should be able to identify your assailants, and those who did this will pay. We promise you that much.”

  Ichiko nodded, not certain what else to say.

  Nagasi stirred next to Ichiko, putting his elbows on the table as he laced his long fingers together. “Captain Keshmiri, the medical staff, and I have been talking. We were hoping to delay the announcement until the last moment, but that seems foolish in the face of what’s happened today. We’re going to send the remaining Lupusians aboard Odysseus home as soon as a shuttle can be readied to accommodate them in isolation. At the same time, we’ll announce officially that—at least for the foreseeable future—no Lupusians will be permitted to return to Earth. We’ll also inform Minister Plunket and all Lupusians that Odysseus will be breaking orbit for our return in three weeks, ship-time.”

  “In the meantime,” Captain Keshmiri interjected, “we’ll do what we can to ensure that every town on Canis Lupus has sufficient supplies, resources, and technological help until another supply ship can be sent out from Earth. We want them to understand that we’re not abandoning them again. We won’t ever abandon them.”

  “And the Inish?” Ichiko asked. “What about them?”

  “That’s more a matter for the locals,” the captain said. “But we’ll suggest . . .”

  She stopped, her head tilted as if listening. The others at the table did the same. A moment later, Ichiko heard her AMI’s voice.

 

  Captain Keshmiri was already waving a hand at the two of them. “Go,” she said simply.

  * * *

  “There has to be something more we can do,” Ichiko said to Nagasi as they were on the lift to the med lab.

  Nagasi sighed at that. His eyes were sympathetic in his dark face as he looked at her. “They’re doing what they can,” he said. “You and I both know that. But we also know that our drug regimens so far haven’t been effective against Lupusian diseases.”

  Ichiko started to speak. Then the lift door opened, so she hurried down the hall to the medical isolation ward. She noticed that those in the large noncritical isolation section—all of the Lupusian volunteers sent here by Minister Plunkett and a few of the other Mainlander clans—were staring at her as they walked quickly past their area. She wondered how much they knew and how much the gossip and speculation about what had happened in Dulcia and their eventual fate had reached them.

  She couldn’t let herself dwell on it. She and Nagasi went into the unsealed antechamber. Behind the glass wall was a bed holding Chava with a trio of the medical staff huddled around her bed, all of them in sealed, full biohazard suits. Ichiko went up to the microphone embedded in the glass and touched the contact below it. “How is she?” she asked, breathlessly.

  One of the techs left the bedside and walked over toward them. The name on the suit said Dr. Huang and the shoulder bore a lieutenant’s insignia. Behind the faceplate, Ichiko could see an older Asian woman’s face. Gray hair straggled over kindly but worried eyes. Dr. Huang’s gaze went from Ichiko to Nagasi; she looked to him as if to confirm she could answer; Nagasi nodded back to her.

  “We haven’t been able to stabilize Lieutenant Bishara yet.” The woman’s voice came through their AMI channels, not through the speaker in the room. “The infection is slowly clogging her lung passages and airway. As you know, the medic from First Base put her on a vent. She’s still on it, and we’re using pressurized air to keep her breathing since she’s no longer capable of that on her own. I’m worried about the stress on her heart and other organs. We’re trying a wide array of antibiotics, hoping one of them or some combination of them will work. But right now . . .” Her shrug was visible under the biohazard suit.

  “What about the Lupusians?” Nagasi asked. “They’ve dealt with this before.”

  “I’ve talked to three different healers downworld,” Huang responded. “They’ve all said the same thing. Once a Gray Threads infection has taken hold, there’s little they can do. They’ll survive or they won’t; it’s in the hands of whatever god or gods you believe in.”

  “That’s not good enough,” Ichiko said angrily.

  “I agree with you,” Huang answered. “Please believe we’re doing what we can and are not giving up on her.”

  Ichiko turned away as Nagasi told the woman, “Thank you, Doctor. I know you’re not.”

  Ichiko thumbed on her AMI and focused her thoughts as well as she could.

 

  As she waited, Ichiko turned back to look at Chava. She watched the slow rise and fall of her chest as if her stare could give Chava the will to keep breathing.

  The Consequences Of Truth

  SAOIRSE SAT ON HER BED, tapping her feet nervously as she waited for Ichiko to respond. She’d heard the request from Ichiko’s AMI and gone to her room, shutting the door for privacy though her mam had glanced at her knowingly as she’d done so. She’d pulled the com-unit from under the bed and placed it on her nightstand, expecting a window to open with Ichiko’s visage, but instead there was a click in her ear and after the expected delay, Ichiko’s familiar accent and soft voice.

  “Saoirse? Thanks for responding so quickly.”

  “What’s going on, Ichiko? Are there more problems about w
hat my uncle said to Minister Plunkett. I’m so sorry that I—”

  “No.” Ichiko’s voice had an edge that severed Saoirse’s burgeoning apology. “Sorry, Saoirse, but we’re dealing with an emergency up here. Lieutenant Bishara has been infected with what you call the Gray Threads. Can you ask your Seann James if he has any potions for that illness—something to kill the infection or at least to control it? And please hurry. I . . . I don’t think she has much time left.”

  “Of course,” Saoirse said. “I’ll go find him now.”

  “Thanks, Saoirse.” Saoirse could hear fear mingled with relief in Ichiko’s voice, giving Saoirse a quick twinge of jealousy. Is Lieutenant Bishara Ichiko’s lover? She shook the thought away.

  “I’m leaving now. I’ll call you back as soon as I’m with Seann James.” With that, Saoirse touched the earpiece to turn it off. She hurried from her room and headed toward the door of the main house.

  “Saoirse?” her mam called. “What’s going on?”

  Saoirse only shook her head. “Can’t talk right now, Mam,” she called back over her shoulder. “Tell you later.” Then she was outside, running through the compound toward the rear where Seann James’ apothecary was set. “Seann James,” she called out breathlessly as soon as she opened the door.

  “What, girl?” He was at one of the drying racks with another of her uncles—one of the Seann’s assistants—holding up a spray of seaflower and sniffing the seeded heads. “Go ahead and crush the seeds,” he told the assistant, handing him the seaflower. “It’s ready. Make sure yeh grind ’em into a fine powder. Fine, d’yeh hear? I want it to be as soft as flour. Now, Saoirse, what can I do for you? Something for cramps?”

  She ignored that. “Seann, what can yeh do about the Gray Threads?”

  Seann James’ head went back, his eyes widening. “Gray Threads? Why? Has one of the children . . . ?”

  Saoirse shook her head. “It’s for a Terran who was accidentally exposed to our air.”