by Laer Carroll
After each patient the strange doctor wrote on a diagnostic tag that she peeled off the "something" that she had taken from the air, using a pen attached to the something. Then she handed the tag to the nurse to secure to each patient's wrist by a clear plastic strap attached to the tag.
Most of the patients were in OK shape before the doctor got to them. Each was much better off afterward--to the relief of the RN, who had begun frowning after the second patient at the unorthodox medical treatments and only ceased frowning more than halfway through when the treatments obviously worked.
The two people from the SUV required more of the doctor's time (if staring off into space while laying hands on the patients constituted treatment time). However, they too were resting easily and painlessly when she left. And somehow free of gasoline odor.
Just as the "girl" finished with the last of the hurt the large Albuquerque medevac copter could be heard approaching from the east. So too could sirens from ambulances, approaching from the west.
"About time," said Gonzales.
Hannegan said, "No. Exactly on time. Which is a very interesting coincidence. If they'd gotten here sooner they would have interfered with Miss ET's work."
The highway patrol officers had been interviewing the witnesses most likely to know what had caused the accident.
As the emergency personnel from the new chopper moved in the young woman walked to meet the two officers.
"I owe you two an explanation after the dirty trick I played on you earlier. Join me for food at the diner." She pointed westward along the highway where the gasoline station and restaurant lay.
"As soon as we're finished interviewing everyone," said Hannegan.
As the woman walked over to her red Ferrari Gonzales said, "Should we try to arrest her? We didn't get a license plate number, or a good enough view to positively identify the car and her."
As an afterthought he said, "Though we should have all that on the automatic camera."
Hannegan said, "I'd bet you a good chunk of money that it mysteriously malfunctioned when the Ferrari passed us."
Gonzales shrugged and the two of them started toward the crew of the medevac chopper, walking quickly to meet them.
<>
Maybe a half-hour later when Gonzales and Hannegan entered the diner the speed scofflaw was seated in a booth by the diner's large front windows. To judge by the debris on her plate she was halfway through the second of three big hamburgers. She took a swig from a huge plastic container of some soft drink and waved them to the red vinyl seat opposite her. The old cushions wheezed a little as the two highway patrol officers settled into place.
Outside the windows they could see the busy freeway and the diner parking lot in which the red Ferrari and a couple dozen other vehicles were parked. This included their own low-slung cruiser with the new "friendlier" white-over-blue colors that had replaced the old white-over-black. On the other side of the freeway was a brown plain and beyond it the smoky grape of distant hills under the hard blue sky.
A waitress was already at their table by the time they had fully settled themselves, a stout Indian woman, perhaps from one of the two nearby reservations. She set down before them two frosty glasses of cold water and handed them menus. She waited while the men glanced inside the menus, handed them back, and ordered. For Gonzales hamburger, lots of fries, and a soft drink, diet. For Hannegan Mexican enchilada combo and iced tea with "real sugar."
The waitress gone, the sergeant turned his attention to her. "Who are you? What are you doing here?"
"I'm a police officer. On vacation." Her smile was mischievous.
"A policeman who flouts the local speed laws?"
Her smile widened. "Well, maybe a policeman who's a bit of an asshole, a little hedonistic, and contemptuous of primitive customs. A typical tourist, in other words."
She took a big bite of her hamburger and chewed the bite while he chewed over her words, finding them less satisfying than she did her food.
"How many more of you are here? What are they doing?"
"I'm the only person here from my civilization. And the only one who's coming for several decades."
The younger man said, "And then what?"
The sergeant made an impatient gesture. "Let's get to that later. How many other...space aliens are here who are from some other civilization?"
The waitress returned with the men's drinks. While she distributed them the visitor to their planet dipped a French fry in catsup and began on it and another bite of hamburger. The men sipped their own drinks and waited for her to finish her mouthful.
"Let me speed this up a bit. There are no threats to your planet for a very long distance away from you."
She held up a hand as the older man opened his mouth. "And I know this because it's my job to know such matters and I have the resources to find such threats. And deal with them."
She looked down toward the hamburger in her hand but her attention was somewhere else. A smile came to her face.
"I spent a few days in the next state eastward before I came here. I was at a music festival in Austin. I heard a story there about their Texas Rangers.
"There was a riot in a frontier town. The mayor sent for a company of rangers. He got one ranger. This upset the mayor greatly. 'But we have a RIOT!' To which the ranger replied, 'One riot, one ranger.'"
She bent over the table, snickering convulsively, for all the world like a teenage boy told a really dirty joke.
The patrolmen looked on sourly. New Mexico being right next to Texas they had heard way-too-many Texas tall tales.
"I'm like those old-time rangers from a century ago. Lot's of territory to cover and few officers to cover it. I scout for threats but also deal with them. So I have to be spy, detective, judge, jury, and sometimes executioner. And like those old rangers I'm given superb equipment. That's why I can assure you that your planet is safe from invasion of any kind."
The men's food arrived and they set to eating. So did the alien, chewing on the last piece of hamburger leavened by a catsup-laden French fry. The sergeant's gaze came back to her, a cold look on his face with a hint of sourness. The corporal's face showed wonderment and curiosity.
"Equipped how?" prompted the young man.
She took a big sip of her soft drink through its straw, looked around to capture the waitress' attention, motioned at her third hamburger, and made a wrapping motion with her hands.
"I have a mother ship, to use your words. She's close to ten miles long, shaped like a football, and has enough weaponry all on her own to turn your moon to dust--literally. But for more surgical operations I carry--the ship carries--more than three thousand daughter ships of various kinds. They carry missiles of various kinds, most about the size of a pencil, some as big as one of those fence posts across the highway. And all carry weapons you can't even imagine.
"Since we got here she's been watching the area around your planet out to a light-month --"
The corporal looked at his companion and explained the term. The sergeant gave him an impatient look but nodded.
The young man said, "But someone might have gotten here before you came."
The waitress showed up and with a few deft moves wrapped the hamburger and slipped it into a carryout bag. The ranger kept her hand over the French fries to keep them from being packed away and held up her soft drink, asking for it to be refreshed.
"One of our automated probes discovered you about seventy years ago and set a net of monitor satellites in orbit about the sun. No one came anywhere near here in those seventy years. Oh, except for a crew I hired to drop by a couple of years ago and set up my cover ID."
"Someone could have come here before that." said the sergeant.
She looked amused. "Someone did. About nine thousand years ago, in a ship carrying a few hundred creatures. Their ship never left, so they are still here. But there's nothing to worry about. This race is very ethical. They would never do anything to harm you."
The c
orporal said, "That's a long time ago. Wouldn't they all be dead? Or did they have...offspring?"
"They wouldn't reproduce. To work to supplant another species would conflict with their principles. And they're practically unkillable. And they don't age. Members of advanced races don't. So they're still here, in some uncompetitive niche."
The corporal said, "You don't age?"
She finished another French fry, nodded at them.
"I'm coming up on four hundred years old. I've been a ranger more than three hundred. Or in jobs leading up to ranger."
The sergeant opened his mouth to speak, but was interrupted by the waitress with their food. After she had arranged the two policemen's orders and left he said, "How do you know about these aliens if you only discovered us seventy years ago?"
"They came through one of the star gates near your sixth planet, the one with the spectacular rings."
"Saturn," said the younger man. "A...star gate?"
She nodded. "There's a sort of subway system somebody high up the evolutionary ladder created many millions of years ago. We think it covers the entire galaxy, but our automated probes have only mapped a small part of it. A spaceship that enters a gate goes very far very fast. And each gate station keeps records about local system traffic which go back pretty far. I queried it when I arrived here."
She took a sip of her drink and ate several French fries while they digested this.
The sergeant interrupted his eating. "These gates. Do they still work?"
"I came here through one. Several hundred other craft come through them every year. Most just pass through. A few stay long enough to refuel by siphoning off some of Saturn's atmosphere. A few stay a few weeks at what you could think of as a shopping mall with a couple of hotels attached."
The sergeant said, "You're contradicting yourself. You said no one had come here. Yet now you say hundreds of ships--"
"Sorry. I failed to make myself clear. By 'here' I mean this planet and your moon. Not this star system."
No one spoke for a while. The men ate and pondered what she had told them. She ate French fries in tiny bites dabbed in catsup and sipped at her drink. And watched them in seeming idleness.
The corporal broke silence first. "How come we never noticed these star gates? Or the ships? We've sent probes to Saturn and astronomers are watching it all the time."
"They would have to be looking at the right place at the right time. The Saturn system is quite big in your terms. The mall is inside one of the smaller moons. And the gates themselves are only gravitic stress points in space. Not even my ship can detect them. We only know where they are because we talk to the master computer. Which is as immaterial as the gates."
The sergeant spoke. "You said something about an evolutionary ladder and someone high up on it. And they made the gates millions of years ago--" He stalled.
"You wonder if they're a threat. Not that we know of. We've no hint, after several thousand years of traveling thousands of light-years, that they are still around. And if they are there's nothing we humans could do against them anyway."
She finished a last French fry, thought a moment, then signaled the waitress over and ordered onion rings.
"You sure eat a lot," said the corporal.
"My body needs more food than yours do."
"You said 'we humans.' You're human?"
She laughed. "Don't I look it?"
"I just thought it was a disguise. Or an illusion."
"Oh, no. I'm as human as anyone on this planet. We can even marry and interbreed. Which is strange. We have plenty of evidence that on every planet where humans live they evolved there independently from humans from the other planets. Yet our genes are compatible. That should be impossible according to our biological science. Which is several thousand years more advanced than yours."
The corporal said, looking down at his own hamburger. "And ours." He looked up at her. "I took college biology a couple of years ago. So do you know why we're all humans?"
"There are several theories. One is that the paths to life are many fewer than we understand. Another is that some star god or gods set it up that way."
Both men blinked.
"Not to be confused," she said, "with any of the gods you worship. Real creatures so advanced and powerful they might as well be gods. And we think they live inside stars. So most people call them star gods."
"That is so strange," the corporal said, shaking his head.
She laughed. "It gets stranger yet. You share this planet with two other intelligences so different from us we can't perceive them without instruments."
"Dolphins? Whales? Please don't tell me octopuses!" He grinned.
"No. One lives in the molten core of this planet. The other in the high ionosphere. Sometimes you see evidence of them in the northern lights and such."
"Are they a danger to us?" said the sergeant. He had finished his Mexican dinner and tidied up after himself. He waved at the waitress and held up his drink. She came over with a refill and took away his trash.
"No."
The sergeant looked unhappy with this answer but did not pursue the subject. "Earlier you said something about someone coming here in several decades? Who? When? What will they do here?"
"Why, recruit you into the human Confederation, of course." She crunched into the first of the onion rings that their waitress had delivered along with the sergeant's refill. An expression of great satisfaction came over her and her eyes defocused as she chewed.
The sergeant slapped the table sharply. "I knew it!"
"Oh, don't worry. They'll be diplomatic about it. In fact, for the first few years they'll just be polite guests everywhere, perfectly happy to play and party and leave it totally up to you to decide when and how to begin formal diplomatic relations."
The corporal looked amused. "And they'll all look like you, won't they? And just casually let slip that everyone in the Confederation has eternal youth."
She looked back at him blandly and crunched into another onion ring as he continued.
"And all the leaders, who are mostly old geezers, will be falling all over themselves to join up so they can get Confederation medical benefits."
"Well...your leaders won't be desperate. By that time your medical science will have advanced enough that everyone will have access to life-lengthening medical benefits. But, yeah, safe cheap eternal youth will be a good bargaining chip."
The corporal's face froze and he set his drink down, the only unfinished part of his meal.
"What?" she said. "Oh. Your mother."
The sergeant looked back and forth between her and the corporal. "What's she talking about, Gonzales? Is your mother sick?"
"Cancer, Sarge. She's pretty far gone."
"God damn it, Gonzales, we're partners. You should have said something."
"When it's already too late for her? Damn it, when I'm at work I don't want to be reminded of it. And I don't want anybody feeling sorry for me!"
The sergeant sat back in his chair. Then he looked hard at the star ranger. "Did you break into our personnel records to find out his mother was sick?"
"Cross my heart, I did not." Then she had the good grace to pretend embarrassment. "Of course, the monitors and my mother ship have access to all electrical activity on this planet. And records of all past activity. So they have your personnel records. But when I asked my ship just now for the reason for the corporal's distress it guessed the cause based on news in local papers and net pages and hospital records and so on. Not from your personnel records."
"You just contradicted yourself. If your mother ship had all those records then you have them too."
"No. I'm on vacation. It's important that I live like one of you as much as I can. So I turned off all but the minimum required access to my mother ship. I had to ask it why the corporal might be upset."
"That makes no sense."
"Believe me, you could tell the difference if I were not on vacation. I'd be totally merged with a
ll my ships. I'd not a human being any longer. I'd be...something more. I'd have no sense of humor, at least not one you could understand. And I wouldn't bother with any primitive social niceties."
"You'd be a total Borg." The corporal was back to sipping his drink and appeared normal.
"Yes." She looked at the sergeant. "A cyborg. A--"
He waved his hand peremptorily. "I know what a cyborg is. And I'm sorry, Gonzales."
The not-quite-Borg in their midst said, "No need for you to be sorry, Sergeant.
"Corporal, your mother is going to be all right. I presume you hug her, and touch her other ways? Well, keep on doing that. You see, I infected you with perfect health while we were rescuing those people. And it's catching."
The sergeant looked back at her. "You...infected...us."
"With perfect health. And anyone you touch." Her look was bland as she crunched into an onion ring.
"What gave you the right to do that to us? You..." He seemed unable to find words.
"If you saw someone bleeding to death, wouldn't it be your duty to help them? The way you helped the bus-accident victims. And I didn't notice either of you going around getting permission from them before you helped them."
The corporal said quietly, "The cases are different."
"To some extent. Not that I care."
She paused, then said, "Touch only those you feel deserve perfect health. And touch them frequently. One touch doesn't do it.
"You'll also heal more rapidly and thoroughly than you did before. Try not to lose limbs. They'll grow back and cause no end of consternation." She giggled. Both men blinked.
"You're...not joking about that, are you?"
She shook her head at the corporal.
"You may notice some improvement in the emotional stability of the people you infect. Someone who loses their temper over little things won't any more. People who get depressed easily won't."
The corporal frowned. "But anger can be good. And depression over really bad stuff is normal."