Dominant Species Volume Two -- Edge Effects (Dominant Species Series) (15 page)

She heard a sound, like a weak groan. It was hers.

She felt his strong, cold hands grip her shoulders and turn her
around.

“Come along, dear.”

Her feet wouldn’t move.

“Come on. It’s not far.”

She heard a distant chuckle and realized it was coming from the
man behind her.

She collapsed like a doll.

“Pick the bitch up,” someone said.

“Christ, she’s pissed herself.”

She felt herself being carried in strong arms and watched the dim
lights in the passageway drift past, one after another.

Finally, they stopped, and she felt herself being lowered to a
cold hard floor. She watched two sets of legs walk away from her then saw the
heavy red airlock door close.

She turned her head and saw the other door. She’d passed through
airlocks just like this one a thousand times. Always when the door slid open,
another passageway followed, sometimes brighter and newer, sometimes older and
dimmer than the one she was in.

She knew that when this one slid open, there would be only the
blackness of space to greet her.

There was a click and a hiss and the door began to slide. A moment
later, she saw the dreaded black seam and the bright, cold light of distant
stars shining through it. There was a sudden sound of rushing air, and she
wanted to scream but something inside prevented it. She felt herself flying
toward the door, and as she passed through it, all sounds dimmed and died to
nothing as if her head had been swathed in thick cotton. Tumbling over and
over, her hand reached for her pearls, her most treasured possession to touch
and hold, one last time.

They were gone.

She tried to say the word
bastards
.
But no sound came out.

The sound of a thousand boiling pots filled her head.

11

Donna
had just sat down to go over the infirmary’s records when Del Geary opened the
door. She hadn’t expected quite this much activity so quickly. She wasn’t ready
for it.

“My feet aren’t workin’ so good,” Geary said.

Donna got a wheelchair from against the wall and hustled it over
to him.

“What happened to you?” she asked, helping him into the chair.

“I just woke up like this. I wasn’t too bad at first.”

She wheeled him over and helped him up onto the examining table.
His boots were unlaced and the swollen condition of his feet made them look
like they were made for a child.

She gently pulled one off, then the sock.

The foot looked like a red balloon, the toes barely recognizable.
She touched it; the skin was stretched and smooth. The swelling was up over the
ankle.

“Any pain?”

“Not much.”

She examined his eyes and noticed how dilated the pupils were.

“Are you taking anything?”

“Like what?”

“Pain killers.”

“No.”

“Do you remember getting bitten by anything?”

“Nope.”

“You haven’t sprained them have you?”

“I might have.”

“How?”

“Walking up a hill.”

“Quite a hill.”

She checked his blood pressure and heart rate, temperature. His
blood pressure and temperature were both a little high. She drew a vial of
blood and put it aside.

“Let’s get a scan. See if there’s anything we can see.” She helped
him over to the scanner and onto the table, then slid the table into the tube.
She turned on the monitor, enabled the recorder and moved the view down to his
feet. There didn’t seem to be any fractures or obvious trauma. She raised the
magnification.

She could see the blood coursing through the veins. There was a
buildup of interstitial fluid from the edema but nothing else unusual.

She upped the magnification again.

Now she could get down to the capillaries. She panned around at
random, shifting focus down to get deep then back up again.

She saw the first larva lodged halfway into a capillary wall.
Shaped like a corkscrew, it writhed against the vessel’s wall as if trying to
get in it.

“Gotcha . . .”

She made sure the recorder was getting the picture then panned
some more. She found another one about a millimeter away. Then another. She
estimated that his feet were infected with thousands of the squirming
organisms.

She’d seen enough and turned the machine off.

“Have you stepped in anything in your bare feet?” she asked
pulling the table out of the tube. “Fecal material, crap?”

“No.”

“Have you been in mud or water?”

Geary thought.

“Yeah.”

“Where?”

“I stepped in a puddle out in the green last night.”

“Umm . . .”

“I didn’t see anything in it, though.”

“You wouldn’t have.”

“Any other aches, pains?”

“No, just my feet and ankles. What is it?”

“I don’t know much about it at this point, or very much about how
to treat it for that matter.”

She made a decision right then to make sure the physician she
ordered had a strong background in parasitology. From what she’d seen, the
planet was crawling with parasitic organisms.

I knew it.

It wasn’t a life or death situation at the moment, and she had at
least three other patients coming in with symptoms just as heinous. “I’m going
to give you something for the swelling and ask you to come back tomorrow,” she
said.” I should have some more information about how to proceed with treatment
by then. You’re off work until I say you can go back.”

“You don’t know what it is, huh?”

“Not yet. No one does.”

“Doctors . . .” Geary snorted.

That rankled. It was best not to rankle Donna Applegate when she
was under pressure. Big mistake.

“I don’t want you to have any contact with other people except to
say
hello
,” she said. “No physical
contact. If I find out you have, I’ll quarantine you.”

“You can’t do that.”

“Yes, I can and I will.”

She took off the other boot with a quick tug. “You can forget
about these boots for a while, you’ll probably do better without them, anyway.”

She wrapped his feet in loose gauze then covered them with
prophylactic booties, another odd, but fortunate, remnant from the orbiter’s
infirmary.

After she sent Geary on his way, she accessed the clinic’s medical
library and found as many references as she could to similar known organisms.
Two or three Terran species came up that had some similarities. It looked most
like an East African Guinea worm infestation. The larvae of the Guinea worm had
to be ingested, but hookworm larvae had a modus operandi similar to Mr. Geary’s
infection—boring through the flesh and traveling through the body, arriving at
last at the gut where they attached and lived out their nasty little lives. She
selected a poison used for hookworms to start with. It was a fairly common
treatment.

It took her an hour of searching to discover she had absolutely
none of the needed medicine.

If it came to it, she’d irradiate his feet in the scanner; that
should kill them. She made some notes.

By the end of the day, she’d examined a dozen patients with a
variety of ghastly infections. She’d wound up dispensing the remaining
antibiotics almost at random, having little idea if any of it would have an
effect on the problems she saw.

She would start ordering medicine tomorrow. She should have
started today.

It was almost dark before she remembered to call that little prick
Afshin.

After applying a broad spectrum topical to a grisly rash on a
woman’s neck, she got on the phone.

Afshin was petulant. She’d expected it, and she was in just a foul
enough mood to ram his petulance up his little ass.

“I need to see Mr. Smith right away,” she said evenly.

“I can’t do that.”

That was it. “I need the goddamned biological inventory reports.
If I don’t have them in an hour, or an audience with Smith, I’ll assume they
don’t exist. If I make that assumption, I’ll be forced to issue a complaint
—
asking
for proof of compliance with EHBS 2344
—
to Commonwealth Health and Safety. Your office will then have to produce the
goddamned survey results or send everybody home within a time frame defined by
yours truly.”

“I see . . .”

“That’s not all . . .”

“Can you wait just a minute?”

“Just one.”

She could almost see him lose color. The screen went blank and she
checked her watch. Forty-five seconds later, Afshin’s not-so-ruddy face was
back in it, smiling.

“Mr. Smith can see you today. Isn’t that great?”

“Wonderful.”

“I’ll send a shuttle down for you within the hour.”

“I’ll be looking for it.”
Smarmy
bastard.

“There’s something else I need right away.”

“What would that be?”

“I need an administrative assistant first thing in the morning.
Someone temporarily until I can order my own. I’m getting buried. I wasn’t
anticipating this much activity this soon.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“Fine,” she said and hung up.

She freshened up, changed into one of her best cottons then closed
the clinic, asking a remaining patient to come back later in the day. She
didn’t have a choice.

She stood on the landing dock and watched as Ed Smith’s personal
shuttle descended. It was older and rattier than she thought it would be, but
the pilot was friendly and seemed competent enough.

There was a single steward on board named James, who offered her
coffee and a little small talk that she discouraged with a sullen look and lots
of silence.

On the way up, she rehearsed what she would say if pressed. She
would not back down; it was too important. Lives were at stake, including her
own and her staff. Smith
could not
have his way
on this. She was prepared to do whatever was required to get what she needed to
safeguard lives.

* * *

She didn’t feel much like talking to a stranger at the moment;
she was too absorbed with the problem of Smith. The ride in the lift provided
few options, though. She stared straight ahead but felt the question coming.

“Are you a doctor, then?” James asked.

“Grade Five Nurse
,” Donna said, relenting.
“Nurse
Administrator
, that is. It’s a new job classification that only
I
have,” she added with a wry grin.

“I see,” James said with a pleasant smile.

The orbiter was old and crappy on the inside like the shuttle.
This entire operation was beginning to look cheap and underfunded. It wasn’t
at all what she’d expected.

James led her down a series of narrow passageways until they
arrived at Smith’s office. Afshin was sitting there at his desk and smiled
brightly when she walked in.

“Donna! Hello! I’m so glad to meet you face to face.”

“Yeah, hi.”

“Please have a seat, Mr. Smith will be right with you.”

Being that close to Afshin combined with the too-clean steward
hanging behind her made her very uneasy. She picked a chair as far away from
both as she could get and sat down.

She barely had time enough to cross her legs when the door to
Smith’s office swung open. She recognized him easily. He was older than his
pictures.

He smiled warmly. “Come in, Donna,” he said.

His office was small but comfortable, almost homey. But she wasn’t
going to be put off her guard. This was a very serious matter for both of them.

“Well . . .” he said.

“I’m sure you’re aware of why I’m here,” she said.

“Yes.”

“I don’t have to tell you how important biological inventories
are to a project like this one.”

“I’m well aware of the importance,” he said easily.

“I assume you’ve actually been on the planet.”

“Oh, yes. Many times.”

“Then you probably know that the surface has a population of one
hundred and twelve contract workers, including myself. What you probably don’t
know is that a full third of them have infections ranging in degree from
annoying to life threatening. Excuse me, but I feel like I’ve fallen into a
pile of shit here.”

He smirked.