Beyond Varallan (2 page)

From what he told me, a new design concept required him to perform several comparison tests on the thrusters. I recalled what I knew of the equipment from the lengthy tour I’d been given during my first week.

“Roelm, when you were running these tests, did you have to balance yourself against the edge of the access panel?” He nodded. “On one leg, maybe?” Another nod. I lightly patted his swollen limb. “This leg?”

“Yes, but—” He stopped and looked sheepish. “I did spend an extended interval in such a position, recalibrating the directional relays and checking circuit tolerances.”

Tonetka had gotten over the giggles. Now she glowered over my shoulder, “
How
extended?”

Roelm made a weak gesture. “A double shift.”

My boss tossed Roelm’s chart up in the air and stalked off. I caught it neatly when it came down, then made the appropriate notation.

“Well, that explains where the edema came from. We’ll keep your leg elevated for now. The diuretics will reduce the swelling.” I tried to look stern. “No more twisting yourself into a pretzel for a whole day, Roelm.”

“What is a pretzel?”

I laughed.

Tonetka didn’t appear at all amused when I entered her office. She shoved aside a touchpad onto which she had been pounding data. White eyes glared in the direction of the Engineer's berth. Then she exploded.

“That stubborn
t’lerue
!”

I closed the door panel, sat down, and calmly completed my chart entry while she vented.

“Males will be males,” I said when she started to run out of bad words I couldn’t understand. “It's the reason the female of most species invariably lives longer.”

“Hmph. I should like to divert his path.”

That constituted a declaration of ClanKill, or—in Jorenian idiomatic terms—a death threat. I knew she wasn’t serious. Tonetka often blustered to vent her frequent frustrations.

“Give him a day or two on a restricted diet,” I said. “That should teach him a lesson.”

“He’s fortunate we don't perform amputations in this age.” Tonetka rubbed her fingers against her brow. A reluctant chuckle escaped her. “Weaving. Mother of All Houses.”

“Think of it as great blackmail material,” I said. “He could be your devoted slave from now on.”

“At the very least. Ah, well. Here are the current cases.” She indicated a short stack of charts. “Roelm constitutes the only new admission. We should prepare for transition in a few hours. I want to put Hado back in sleep suspension.”

Tonetka and I had performed open-heart surgery on Navigator Hado Torin a few weeks before. Despite his steady recovery, his condition remained guarded. The extra precaution of putting him in a sleep suspension field before the
Sunlace
dropped out of dimensional füghtshielding would protect his still-healing cardiac organ.

“Are we getting near that planet Captain Pnor told me about?” I asked. “Ness-something?”

“NessNevat. You haven’t been accessing your relays again.”

“I keep forgetting.” No, I didn’t.

“Program an alarm,” my boss said. “As Senior Healer, you will be required to review intership communications daily. Even,” she said when I tried to interrupt, “the ones to which you do
not
desire to respond.”

I rolled my eyes. “If you only knew how many times I get invited to someone’s quarters for a meal interval…”

“You are a popular member of our HouseClan.” Tonetka had no sympathy for me. “As Terrans say, get used to it.”

That was the whole problem. My life had never been this complicated before. On my homeworld, for example, I worked, ate, and slept. After I’d left Terra and transferred to Kevarzangia Two a year ago, I made a few friends I never had time for. Worked. Ate. Slept.

However, here on the
Sunlace
, I found myself up to my eyebrows in nice, sociable Jorenians who had absolutely no intention of leaving me alone. Ever since I’d been formally adopted by HouseClan Torin, I'd been under siege.

They signaled me constantly. Invited me to eat, talk, or spend recreation time with them. Stopped by my quarters to chat. Would have stayed and sung me to sleep if I’d asked.

My biggest problem?
Guilt
. I suspected all the attention I was getting sprang from sympathy over the death of my Jorenian lover. I was considered a widow in the crew’s eyes. Yet Kao's death had been
my fault
.

Then there was the Allied League of Worlds’ failure to recognize me as a sentient being over the matter of my being a genetic construct—a clone. That ruling had ultimately prompted Joren to rescue me from K-2, adopt me, then break off all relations with the League. Added to that was the bounty the League had put on my head, which constituted more credits than a raider could make in ten lifetimes. Half the mercenaries in the galaxy were probably out hunting for the
Sunlace
by now.

In light of all that,
I
felt the HouseClan should resent me.
They
thought I should just ignore the whole distasteful business, and stop by for a meal when I was free.

Eventually (I hoped) I’d get used to it. The
Sunlace
was currently en route to Joren. HouseClan Torin’s homeworld, in the Varallan Quadrant. Since the journey would take a revolution, equal to a standard Terran year, I had ample time to adjust to my new family. Or to get off the ship.

“Caution.” Tonetka's vidisplay sounded an alert. “Multiple incoming emergencies.”

The Senior Healer and I dropped what we were doing and hurried out into the bay. Squilyp intersected our path. A pair of female educators limped in, carrying an unconscious child between them.

They were a mess. Shredded garments. White eyes wide with shock. Serious lacerations all over them. A spattered track of greenish Wood on
the
deck trailed behind them back to the gyrlift panel.

“Here.” Tonetka helped them place the limp little girl on an open exam pad. Her experienced eye evaluated case priority in a blink. “Cherijo, the child. Squilyp, with me.”

I performed a visual first. She had a minor head wound, dozens of“ shallow contusions, and a few deep ones, all on the front surfaces of her body. Her powder-blue skin felt cool and clammy; her respiration sounded jerky and labored. A quick pass of my scanner revealed the rapid drop in her blood pressure.

“I need hands over here!” I yelled as I put aside the scanner, then yanked a thermal cover over the child. One of the junior residents joined me at the exam pad, and monitored while I quickly sterilized, masked, and gloved.

I checked the child’s airways, and found them mercifully clear, “She's in shock. Oxygen, stat.” The resident took care of that while I attached a fluidic infuser to the small arm.

“Uhhh…”

“Easy, sweetheart,” I said as her eyelids fluttered, “You’re going to be fine.” My gaze shifted to the resident, who adjusted the monitor's sensors from adult to juvenile levels. “What's her name?”

“This is Fasala Torin.”

“Fasala.” My hand lightly stroked her brow. “Honey, can you hear me?”

“Yes…” Dull with pain, the child’s eyes opened.

Her gaze made a tight knot form in my chest. Had mercenaries attacked the ship again, without an alarm sounding? What else could have done this? Fasala couldn’t be more than five years old. Just a kid. Bleeding because of me?

“Heal… er… hurts…”

I could agonize over the possibilities later. She needed me now. “It’s okay, honey. We're going to take care of that.” To the resident, I said, “Twenty-five cc's of pentazaocine.”

After administering the painkiller, I watched the monitors. The vise on my lungs eased as her levels began to stabilize. Although Fasala slipped back into unconsciousness, the immediate danger of traumatic shock was over.

She wouldn’t die. I wouldn't let her.

The resident rapidly prepared an instrument tray while I ran a second scan series. By then the shallow head wound had stopped bleeding. That was odd; the shallow ones usually gushed like fountains. I frowned when I saw none of the other open gashes were bleeding, either. Jorenians had wonderful physiologies, but their blood didn’t coagulate
this
fast. Especially not with multiple breaches of the subdermal cartilage layer,

“Tonetka?” I called out. “She’s stopped bleeding. For no apparent reason.”

“This one as well,” Squilyp said.

“Scan the lacerations for foreign material,” Tonetka said. I glanced back and saw her bent over one of the educators with a magniviewer. “Do either of you see anything?”

Squilyp’s gildrells flared with agitation as he scanned the other female. “I cannot find visible debris here,” he said, and glared down at the moaning patient. He probably thought she was hiding it from him.

Tonetka addressed the educator she was treating. “Tell me, ClanCousin, what caused these injuries?”

“I do not know, Senior Healer.” Pain made the patient’s voice sound reedy. “Fasala did not return from our group environome activity. We found her an hour ago, on the fourteenth level. The interior buffer…” Her eyes closed briefly. “It shattered.”

I knew vaguely what an interior buffer was—some sort of security barrier inside the hull that prevented accidental decompression. Too bad I couldn’t apply some of that to the Omorr's mouth.

“That’s impossible!” I heard Roelm Torin yell from his berth across the ward. “No buffer could—”

At the same time, the Omorr said, “Interior buffers are indestructible. No—”

“Quiet!” Tonetka cut both men off, then asked the educator, “How many others were injured?”

“Only the three of us.”

“You are certain it was the buffer?”

“I felt it implode back on us.” The educator shuddered. “As if we had been slashed by a thousand unseen knives.”

Squilyp stopped probing his patient and stared at the educator in horror.

Roelm gasped. “Mother of All Houses.”

I guessed that meant these buffer things
did
shatter. The constriction in my chest started to loosen. Maybe it hadn’t been from an attack on the ship. Plus Squilyp was actually
wrong
about something. The known universe was going to collapse. Right there in front of my eyes.

“Cherijo, Squilyp, set your scans for adaptable sonic alloy debris in the wounds,” the Senior Healer said.

“What, exactly, is ’adaptable sonic alloy debris'?” I asked.

“It’s what they make buffers out of,” Squilyp said, overjoyed that he knew something I didn't. “Sonic-based matter. It will not be visible to your eye, nor can you feel it. Use the most sensitive setting.”

Invisible, untouchable debris. Lovely. Could this possibly get any worse? “When we’re done here, I hope someone will explain this stuff to me,“ I said as I recalibrated my scanner’s range.

Sure enough, when I made another pass the display revealed innumerable tiny shards lodged in each laceration. Tightly meshed together, which explained the coagulant effect—the ghost-debris had sealed off the wounds. When I applied my probe tip, the debris immediately surrounded it. Like sticking a finger in water.

“Any suggestions on how to remove something I can’t feel?“ I asked. ”Or grab?“

“Roelm?” Tonetka raised her head to consult him. “What is used to fit the alloy during construction?”

“Resonant harmonicutters,” the engine designer said.

My ears perked up at that. “Resonant?” I glanced over •
^:
the edge of my mask at the engineer. “You mean you cut :•• these buffers with sound?”

My terminology made Roelm look pained. “They are sonically fitted to each vessel.”

Same difference, I thought, then addressed my boss. “Tonetka, remember when I told you about the ultrasound diagnostic imaging once used on my homeworld? We can adapt something like that to remove these shards.”

“Ultrasound?” Squilyp sneered at the archaic word. “Why don’t you simply hack them out with amalgam blades?”

I ignored him. It was easy, I’d had lots of practice. “We can modify our scanners to emit a low-spectrum sonic field.”

Tonetka saw where I was going. “The buffer alloy will vibrate, but how will we extract the shards?”

“Connect your dermal probes to the scanners,” Roelm's called out. “Calibrate them to match the alloy's frequency.“

The Omorr resident nodded his approval to Roelm.

“Buffer alloys are self-restorative. The nature of the matter is to be attracted to itself.” He then gave
me a
surly look.

Yeah, I thought, the dumb unqualified Terran does it again. Doesn’t it just make you want to scream?

The resident assisting with Fasala urged me in a low voice to make haste.

Once I’d modified my scanner, I connected a dermal probe to it and started on one of the larger wounds. A low sound like tinkling glass hummed as I probed the gash. Gently I tugged, and felt something slide from Fasala’s flesh.

Green blood flowed at once.
Got it
. A pass with an alternate scanner revealed no more shards in the site. I held up my gloved fist. Saw nothing on the surface of the probe.

“Uh, Roelm?” I raised my head and held up the instrument. “How do we dispose of stuff we still can’t see or touch?”

“Seal the probe in a vacuum.”

It took fourteen more probes before the child’s wounds were completely shard free. Sealed vacuum containers littered the deck. As we worked, a nurse summoned a team from Environment Operations to remove the dangerous shrapnel.

I finished first, so the unhappy task of signaling Fasala’s ClanParents fell on my shoulders. I broke the news to Darea and Salo as gently as I could. Both were on their way to Medical as soon as my signal terminated.

Once I was assured the Senior Healer didn’t need help with the educator (Squilyp would have slit his membrane junctures before asking for my assistance), I went to talk to Roelm. He was staring at Fasala, whose critical-care berth was only a meter away from his.

We both got to watch Darea and Salo rush in and hurry to their child’s side. Salo turned pale the moment he saw her. Darea pressed her fist tightly against her mouth.