Afterburn

by S. L. Viehl

  “Bonjour, Emily.” The tall blond woman inspected her. “Your hair looks pretty, but you still wear the same colors every day. Tell these Administration people we are not all color-blind. They must use some imagination when designing tunics.”

  Accustomed now to Lisette’s bossiness, Emily simply nodded and paid for the meal order. “Were you able to find those mites I asked about?”

  “Bollien mites, oui. They are uncooked, but I steam the weffer roots a little; they grew dry in shipment.” Lisette handed over the neatly packed food containers. “Your Omorr will enjoy them.”

  “Thanks.” Emily looped the pack strap over her wrist. “He’s really not my Omorr. I mean, we’re just friends.”

  Lisette’s smile turned knowing. “I will remind you of this at your wedding.”

  Hkyrim had told Emily where Pathology was located, but she stopped by the front reception desk at the FreeClinic to sign in. The Aksellan nurse manning the console turned out to be the large black-and-green spider who had been kind to Emily during her first day on planet, and they immediately recognized each other.

  “Zo, Terran, how haz it been with you zince lazt we zaw each other?” the nurse asked after issuing her a visitor’s badge.

  “It’s been a dream come true.” Not in the way she’d imagined, but Emily was adjusting and gaining new confidence day by day. “I enjoy my work, my supervisor is terrific, and I’ve made a great friend.”

  “You zhould make more. Why don’t you vizit the Akzellan cooperative zometime?” The nurse showed her on a screen map where it was located. “Azk for me, Ylloh, and I will introduze you to my nezt-zizterz.”

  Other people had told her that, while they were friendly and benign, Aksellans rarely made overtures of friendship toward anyone. Emily felt flattered and a little flustered. “I will, thank you, Ylloh.”

  Emily made her way to Pathology, where another pleasant nurse directed her to one of the examination rooms. “I can signal Dr. Hkyrim, if you’d rather wait out here.”

  Doctor? Emily hadn’t realized Hkyrim had a medical degree. “No, I’ll just pop in and say hello,” she said to the nurse.

  The corridor leading to the examination rooms smelled of preservative chemicals and antiseptic, and for a moment Emily wondered if her stomach was up to seeing Hkyrim—Dr. Hkyrim, she corrected herself—performing an autopsy. I’ve seen him eat, and I’ve faced his friends. I can stand a little vivisection.

  She pressed the door chime before enabling the panel, and walked in. The chemical odors were much stronger inside the large, white room. Bleeping, chiming, and buzzing sounds came from the mysterious and important-looking devices and panels that lined the walls. The Omorr was working over some sort of analysis rig; looking through a scope at something small and curled in a round clear dish.

  “Hard at work, Doc?” she asked.

  “Emily.” Hkyrim looked up from the scope eyepiece. “You said nothing about visiting me.”

  “That’s why we call it a surprise.” She held up the pack of food containers. “Besides, I owe you a working lunch.”

  “How kind of you. I completely lost track of time.” He removed the round, open-topped dish from the analysis rig. “This is a specimen of wrill, from the Western Sea. Dr. Mayer believes it is infected with an unknown parasite.”

  “But you don’t.”

  “I am not sure what I am seeing.” He placed the dish down and added a little fluid to it before sealing a lid over the specimen. “It is the oddest thing. Judging by the damage to its head, it was killed by enlargement of its brain. It swelled so much it broke open the creature’s skull.” He glanced at her. “Forgive me. My description was not conducive to enhancing your appetite.”

  “I don’t mind.” And she didn’t, really, as long as she didn’t look in the dish. “Are you hungry? Can you take a few minutes break time?”

  “Yes, and yes.” Hkyrim turned back to pick up the specimen. “I will just put this . . .” He stopped speaking and stared down at his hand.

  “I can come back later.” Emily made herself look at the dish. The lid was cracked in half, and some of the clear fluid from the dish had spilled onto Hkyrim’s hand.

  Hkyrim’s hand, the membranes of which had turned a dark purple and were swelling.

  The meal pack fell from her hand. “What is that doing to you?”

  “I don’t know, but it is invading my cells. Please give me that vacuum container there,” the Omorr said, and pointed to a nearby container. When Emily did, he took it and moved away. The discoloration was creeping up from his membranes and over the skin of his hand. “Seal the door, and don’t touch me.”

  While Emily secured the panel, Hkyrim placed the dish in the container and withdrew his blackened hand before sealing it. Holding the appendage away from his body, he thrust it under the scope and looked at it.

  “Emily, bring a lascalpel here.” Pain laced his voice. “Quickly.”

  She looked around wildly. “Where is it? What does it look like?”

  “A silver writing device with an emitter tip, next to the chart on the exam bench.” Hkyrim moved from the scope to stand beside a large, transparent tank.

  Frantically Emily located the lascalpel and brought it to him, but he didn’t take it from her. “Should I signal for help?”

  “There is not enough time,” Hkyrim said. “You must do this for me. I cannot be sure I will stay conscious long enough.”

  “Do what?”

  “Turn on the lascalpel and amputate my hand.”

  “What?”

  “Please, Emily. You must do so now, before it spreads into my bloodstream.”

  “I can’t.” She stared at the device in her hand and shook her head. “I’ll get a doctor—someone who knows how to—”

  “Give it to me, then.” He held out another hand. “I do not wish to die like this.”

  “You are not going to die.” Emily fumbled with the device until she found the enable switch and the emitter glowed bright white. “Where do I cut?”

  “Above the infection site, here.” He pointed to a spot above the dark swelling, and then held his arm over the tank.

  Emily had to stand close to reach the arm, and for a moment thought she might faint. Something touched her cheek—one of his gildrells—and gave her a gentle caress.

  “I know you can do this,” he murmured.

  There was no time to think, only to act. Emily pointed the lascalpel at Hkyrim’s arm and switched on the cutting beam. She felt him jerk as the laser sliced through the top layer of his derma. One of his arms clamped around her waist as she reached the four arm bones. It seemed to take forever, but the instrument was precise and efficient. A few seconds later the infected appendage fell from the cauterized stump and dropped into the tank.

  What she had done, and the smell of burning flesh, made Emily gag, but she turned off the lascalpel and turned to him. “What do I do now?”

  Hkyrim’s face was a pinkish-gray and covered with sweat. “Help me seal the tank and go back to the scope.”

  She supported his weight as they secured the amputated hand, and then helped him over to the exam bench. Only after Hkyrim had thoroughly examined the stump of his arm under the scope did he straighten. “There are no more of them present. You are an excellent cutter, my friend.”

  Emily caught him as he staggered back and held him up. “Why did you make me do that to you? What was it?”

  “Tell Mayer it was nanites,” he said, his voice a whisper now. “Signal the Emergency Room. Don’t let them open the containers.” His eyes rolled back, and he sagged against her.

  Teresa saw twin plumes of water spout into the air off the port bow—a signal from Dair and Onkar that they had found something—and called up to the control tower. “Cut the engines.”

  After a week of cruising the empty sea Teresa was glad to suit up and climb into the inflatable. The days and nights of being on board and watching the empty monitors had started wearing on her nerves; she wa
sn’t used to spending this much time dry. Noel refused to let her dive, though, insisting on the ’Zangians doing the scouting under the surface.

  “It’s for the best, Terri,” he had told her. “If something happens, they can both jump out of the water and onto the boat fast. You’d be weighed down by your gear.”

  Teresa was preparing to activate the winch to lower the inflatable over the side when Argate appeared on deck.

  “What are you doing?” He looked angry. “We don’t know what they’ve found yet. Let one of the researchers go.”

  “I’ll find out,” she called up to him, and switched on the winch before he could stop her.

  Onkar and Jadaira swam up beside the inflatable as soon as Teresa released the lines. Both of them looked unhappy.

  Dair cleared the water from her gill vents. “We found a wrill island about a quarter kim east of here,” she said. “There’s a dead mogshrike on it.”

  Teresa slipped on her headset and relayed this back to the ship’s com officer, then asked, “You’re sure it’s dead?”

  Onkar gave her an ironic look. “Quite sure.”

  Teresa pressed her lips against a smile. ’Zangians had such an instinctive aversion to the injured or dead that usually they would do anything to avoid them. No wonder both of them looked pale as powder.

  “Can you hang in long enough to take me to it?” A dead specimen wasn’t what she had hoped for, but given their failure to find any live ’shrikes, it might have to suffice.

  Onkar slipped one of the inflatable’s lines over his sloped shoulder. “I’ll guide you there. Jadaira, go back on board the vessel.”

  “I’m not getting out of the water until you do,” Dair told him.

  The big male’s bicolored eyes shifted to Teresa. “Have I ever expressed my gratitude to you for raising my mate to be so independent and stubborn that her head might as well be made of rock?”

  “No, but I’ll take that as a thank-you,” Teresa said, and laughed as she started up the inflatable’s small propulsion unit.

  The wrill island wasn’t technically an island, but an enormous pile of discarded carapaces; one of the oddities in the outer currents. In certain areas, wrill blooms in molt would swarm and shed simultaneously. Their old exoskeletons would form hills beneath the surface and, where the bottom was shallow enough, would rise above the surface. Eventually the currents would whittle away the pile until it vanished, but until they did, the shells formed a tiny island.

  Although Teresa had seen wrill islands in the past, the size of the one Dair and Onkar brought her to made her gawk.

  “Good Lord, that has to be a hundred yards across.” She could see the dead ’shrike, too—a huge mound beached on the north side of the island. She leaned over toward Onkar. “Bring me right up alongside the carcass.”

  The two ’Zangians flanked her up to the artificial shore of the wrill island, and then swam away as soon as she had fired an anchor line into the solidly packed shell surface. Teresa didn’t blame them; the stench from the dead mogshrike was already making her own stomach turn. She secured the inflatable and climbed out, careful to find her footing on the slippery surface before approaching the carcass.

  “Noel, how is the picture on your end?” she asked over her headset, which also held a small lens above her right ear that was transmitting images of everything she looked at back to the Briggs.

  “Perfect,” Argate said over her earpiece, “but I’m pissed off at you for leaving the boat. This is grunt work, Terri.”

  “I don’t mind being a grunt.” Teresa circled around the carcass, getting all angles of it while checking for predators. She wasn’t worried about the sterbol or gnaldorf, which would feed on whatever was hanging in the water. However, there were a few species of carrion mollusks that had shells covered in poisonous spines, and which could crawl out of the waves, and she didn’t fancy stepping on one.

  “Big mother,” Noel said.

  “A twenty-five tonner, I think. Carcass appears to be completely intact.” She came around to the front side and saw the massive wound that had sheared off most of the ’shrike’s head. “Whoops, spoke too soon. Single head wound; ninety-five percent of the upper cranial case is gone, along with the eyes, snout, mouth, teeth and”—she leaned over to look inside the wound cavity—“brain.”

  “Another ’shrike?”

  “Had to be.” Teresa studied the ’shrike’s abdomen, which was broad and heavy with feed. “Nothing else with a mouth big enough, or that would shear it off like this.” Something twitched under the ’shrike’s skin. “Stand by.”

  She brought out a scanner and ran it over the carcass without touching it. The ’shrike was dead, but escaping gases from the decomposition process—always very rapid in aquatic life-forms—might have caused it to twitch. One of her more gruesome instructors back at BioTech had called the process “death farts.”

  Teresa was taking a reading for bacterial infestation when the belly twitched a second time. This was more like a stretch than a twitch, however. The skin of the carcass actually rose and then deflated.

  Could it be . . . ? Teresa pulled on a pair of gloves to protect her hands before reaching to touch the surface of the ’shrike’s belly. A centimeter before she did, the belly swelled outward and bumped her hand.

  Or, rather, the fetus inside did.

  Teresa backed away. “Noel, this ’shrike was whelping, and the baby is still alive inside her body.” She took the blade out of her harness. “I need a tranq gun and a live specimen containment unit over her, pronto.” She also had to film every second of this. No one had ever seen a ’shrike give birth, or knew what the process was.

  “I’m bringing over another inflatable with the gear we need. Terri, don’t try to take it out until I get there,” Noel said with some urgency. “Are you sure you don’t have any tranq with you?”

  “Sorry, I didn’t think to bring any. Hang on.” A muffled, gnashing sound made her reach up and switch off the audio so she could hear better. The belly skin of the carcass was moving again, but not in the same way, and not as dramatically. She could see the movements beneath it growing less pronounced. At the same time, the gnashing sound continued, almost like a defective drone grinding internal gears.

  No one had ever observed a ’shrike birth.

  The gear-grinding sound was growing fainter, the circular undulation beneath the skin almost subsiding. Gears. Gears meshed.

  Gears had teeth.

  Mogshrikes were born with teeth and did not nurse, Teresa knew that much. So the infant ’shrike had no use for the mother after birth. And since mature ’shrikes would eat anything that moved, including other shrikes . . .

  “Noel,” she said. “You’ve got to hurry. I think it’s trying to eat its way out of the mother’s belly.”

  “We’re having problems with the propulsion unit here,” Argate transmitted back. “I need ten minutes.”

  “It’ll suffocate by then.”

  “That’s all right,” Argate told her. “We’ll take both bodies back with us. Stand by, Terri.”

  Teresa looked at the carcass. The infant’s movements were pitiful, and it was clearly tiring. Without tranqs, she could never try to bring it onto the ship, or even get in the water with it. Noel was right; they’d recover both bodies and take them back to the URD for study.

  Jadaira’s birth had been like this. Kyara had actually died in labor, and Teresa had been forced to cut open her friend’s body to get the little white pup out.

  Without thinking too much about it, she approached the carcass and dragged her blade along the outer edge of the area that had shown movement.

  A puff of gas rose into her face, making her grimace. God, this thing stinks. If I was stuck in there, I’d eat my way out, too. She extended the incision as far as she dared, and then heard the grinding sound grow louder and stepped back again.

  The slice she had made through the ’shrike’s tough hide widened into a gap, through which the end of
a small, blunt snout protruded. Blood and fluid sprayed out at her as the infant exhaled and emitted a high, bleating sound. The snout pushed out until it sank glittering, baby-size ’shrike teeth into the edge of the incision and tore it wider.

  “Mom, what is it?” Jadaira called from the other side of the island.

  Teresa measured the distance to the water. If the ’shrike was able to eat its way out of the mother’s body, it was more than ten yards to the edge of the shell pile. It had no means of locomotion on land, and it would suffocate without water.

  She couldn’t wait until Noel worked out the problem with the other inflatable. “Dair, you and Onkar get up here, right now,” she called to them. When she saw them climbing out of the water, she turned to the carcass and plied her blade again, this time creating a lateral incision the length of the abdomen.

  For a moment a bloody membrane bulged out of the long gap Teresa had cut, and then it burst, spewing fluid, placenta, and an infant ’shrike the same size as Teresa onto the shells.

  “Whoa.” Teresa scurried back, but she couldn’t stop staring at the newborn. It had the same coloring as its mother, but the body appeared deformed. Its mouth was wider but shallower, and it had no claspers. The domed shape of the upper head and the longer tail and fins were more like those of warm-blooded aquatics.

  Teresa forgot about the malformed body parts as the baby ’shrike began snapping and writhing, choking on the air it couldn’t breathe.

  “Damn it.” She looked over her shoulder at the incredulous ’Zangians. “Help me drag it to the edge.” Neither of them moved. “Now.”

  The infant ’shrike went still as soon as Teresa grabbed its tail. Small eyes rolled up as it looked at Jadaira and Onkar, who flanked it and took hold of its pectoral fins.

  “Watch the denticles,” Teresa told them as they began to haul it toward the water. The ’shrike didn’t move or struggle against them, but lay limp, its gill vents straining for water that wasn’t there.

  “Teresa, why are we doing this?” Onkar demanded, even as he pulled. “We should kill it.”