Neptune Crossing (The Chaos Chronicles) (21 page)

"
BANDICUT!
" Jones bellowed.

And he finally, dimly realized what he was doing. It was sheer idiocy; he could get stuck here himself. He was caught in the quarx's memory of a desperate need to save a robot...but Copernicus was in no real danger. And even if it was, so what? /Charlie,/ he whispered, /did you want me to do this—?/

The answer rattled up faintly, from somewhere deep in his mind:

/// No, but...what are you...? ///

The scanning lasers on the robot suddenly rotated and flashed back off the ice, dazzling him. The quarx writhed...
the destruction of everything
...

Bandicut shuddered and squirmed back. He twisted, glimpsing where Jones was standing at the entrance to the borehole, yelling at him.

"Are you delirious? Get out of there!"

Bandicut shuffled, crouching, toward the foreman. He heard himself croaking, "No, no, not delirious—" he gasped. "It's this damn
alien
in my—"

/// NO! ///

shrieked the quarx, and did something inside Bandicut's head.

His vision flickered off and on once, then went black as he fainted. It was only for an instant, but long enough for him to lose his balance, for his feet to shoot out from under him on the ice. He skidded feet first toward the end of the tunnel and Jones's head—and the mining laser just beyond Jones. He clawed futilely—so light in this gravity—

He flew out of the shaft, airborne, and Jones hit him with a body blow to deflect him, and he careened into the cavern wall and bounced back toward the blazing light. He screamed and stuck out a foot—and caught it on the laser's pedestal, then slammed into the pedestal before dropping in a crumpled heap to the floor. Pain blazed up his leg, and he cried out, once—

—before the quarx, panicked, shut off the pain impulses; and then his consciousness, too.

Chapter 14

Strange Fevers

He became aware of voices before he knew where he was. They seemed to be discussing whether or not to get him unsuited before taking him to the infirmary. "It'll just get in their way," someone was saying.

"This monitor says he's got a broken ankle," someone else answered. "Whaddyou think we'll do to that if
we
try to take this suit off? They got nano-shit that can do that, in the infirmary."

A heavy voice cut in, "I don't want this suit ruined down there.
They
ain't gonna give a flyin' horse-moke about the equipment."

"Have a little heart, Herb! The guy's hurt!" That sounded like Krackey.

"Yeah, well, he may be hurt, but that don't make him any less of a
dumb
fucker," the heavy-sounding voice retorted. "Imagine goin' on shift with a fever of a hundred 'n' four and not tellin' anyone! Serves him right he almost got hisself killed."

Massengale. That last idiot was Massengale.

"Hey, come on, will you? He was probably too feverish to know he was sick."

Bandicut's eyes blinked open. His visor had been pushed up, and he was staring up at the ready-room ceiling. How'd he get here? he wondered vaguely. He groaned aloud and fended off the hands that were trying to remove his helmet. With a Herculean effort, he shoved it off himself. He felt a region of numbness around his left ankle. He tried to recall what had happened, and found his memory a feverish muddle. He remembered the silence-fugue. And he remembered the quarx shutting him down like an overloaded circuit.

/// You were in severe pain.

It seemed the best course of action.

Are you okay now? ///

"Awww, too bad! He woke up," Massengale remarked.

Bandicut tried to raise his head to glare, but the supervisor was already on his way out of the room. "Stupid stoker," he grunted. He shifted his gaze to see who else was here with him. Krackey was the only one he knew. "Ah, man!" he sighed.

"Take it easy, there, Bandie," Krackey said worriedly. "You got a fever
an'
a broken ankle. It must hurt like a bastard, but we don't want to do nothin' until the meds get a look at you."

Great,
he thought. The meds. The same meds who'd tried to fix his neuros. He wondered if the quarx could do anything to help.

/// I can keep the pain turned off,

as I'm doing now.

That's about all, I think. ///

He sighed and forced a grin in Krackey's direction. "It's...not too bad," he said, realizing suddenly that it was true. He felt disoriented, but there was very little physical pain, except for a hollow sort of emptiness below his left knee. He wondered if that was what a phantom limb felt like to someone who'd lost a leg.

"Ho, man, Bandie! If you're not in some serious pain, it must be because of that fever." Krackey looked at the first-aid monitor and shook his head. "You got yourself one whale of a fracture there. What happened? And what the hell
were
you doing, working, if you were sick like that?"

Sick? he thought. Fever? Had he actually been delirious with fever, instead of silence-fugue? That, somehow, would be easier to take.

/// Uh, no—sorry.

I gave you the fever

as an excuse for your behavior.

What were you thinking of,

trying to pull a robot out by its hind legs? ///

/Thinking? Didn't you notice, I was out of my mind with fugue?/ He remembered the quarx's flashback-induced silence. /Anyway, where were you? You're supposed to help me out when these things happen./

/// I am?

I don't have much recollection of that.

I suppose...I was a trifle indisposed

for a while there. ///

Bandicut felt movement, and realized suddenly that he was on a gurney, being rolled toward the door. Krackey was walking alongside him. The door opened and two medtechs came in and took the gurney. "You guys can't go walking out of here like that," one of them said. "Your boss said to tell you to go back to work," said the other. That was when Bandicut noticed that the miners were all still suited, except for their helmets.

"I'll check in on you as soon as I can," Krackey promised, with a wave. "Don't worry—these guys will have you riveted back together in no time. Just take it easy and get over that flu!"

Bandicut blanched as the techs sped him through the door and down the corridor.

*

"No way!" he yelled, shaking. "No nanomeds!"

"Oh, come on, Bandicut. We can have you back at work in two days if you just let us—"

Bandicut flailed an arm, clenching a fist in warning. He started to sit up, but a pair of strong arms grabbed him and held him down on the table. "
No—nanomeds—!
" he wheezed, against the pressure on his chest.

Dr. Switzer's face came into view over him. He was a stocky man with thinning silver hair, probably in his late fifties. What the hell a man his age was doing out here on Triton, Bandicut hated to think. Probably barred from practice on all the other inhabited worlds. Switzer peered at him through his black-rimmed glasses, frowning. "Still can't forgive and forget, eh, John?"

Bandicut grunted. "Yeh," he managed, holding back a dozen harsher answers. "I guess that's it."

"Tsk, tsk." Switzer moved away, shaking his head. "Well... we wouldn't want to give you something that would cause you any
psychological
side effects, I suppose."

Bandicut raised his head suspiciously. He didn't like the sound of that. As senior medical officer on Triton, Switzer approved or disapproved everyone's fitness-for-duty status. Medically
and
psychologically. "What's that mean?"

"It doesn't mean anything, John." Switzer turned back with an alarming-looking clamping device in his hand. "I'm just trying to save you pain, that's all. Now we'll have to set that bone the old-fashioned way, and it'll take you a good four or five days to heal well enough to work. I suppose you can use the time to catch up on your reading. Jean, give him the injection, please," Switzer said brusquely.

Bandicut swiveled his head, but the nurse had already jammed the syringe into his leg. He felt a rush of giddiness. What the hell was
that?
he managed to think, before the sensation swept him away like a flickering holochannel, removing him from any awareness of his surroundings.

*

/// May I ask a question? ///

/What question? What's going on here? Why can't I see anything? Did you do that to me?/

/// It was the injection.

I merely organized the effect slightly,

so that we could use this time to talk.

You can't do anything else now anyway. ///

/Thanks a bundle. Look, I need to know what they're doing to me. I don't trust them. They aren't shooting nanomeds into me, are they?/

/// I don't think so... ///

A small, framed image flicked on, like a monitor in one corner of a darkened control room. He could see the doctor and nurse and medtechs moving around him, stretching his leg out in some sort of tension device enclosed within a sensor array. It was fascinating to watch...until he remembered that it was his broken ankle they were stretching and twisting. Suddenly he preferred talking with the quarx. /You said you had a question?/

/// Yes.

What are these nanomeds?

Why are you so afraid of them? ///

Even in the darkness and peace of the anesthesia-gloom, he would have winced if he could have.

/// Your reaction to them is pronounced. ///

/Yeah,/ he muttered. /Yours would be, too, if nanomeds had done to you what they did to me./

/// I can't...locate the memory.

What are they? ///

/Submicroscopic repair units—self-replicating robots the size of large molecules, programmed with medical instructions and injected into the body to make repairs. There's practically nothing they can't fix—/

/// Then what—? ///

/—in theory,/ he finished acidly.

/// Oh. Then they don't always work? ///

/No, they don't./ He tasted the bitterness and anger all over again. /They're only as good as the programming patched into them, see. And these quacks used them to try to fix some damage to my neurojack implants./ Even his mind-voice trembled as he remembered, for Charlie's benefit, what had happened...as he remembered the terrible shearing away of his ability to connect, to link in to that infinite world of...

/// And the attempt failed? ///

the quarx interrupted.

/You saw it,/ he said savagely. /You saw the silence-fugue! They screwed up the nanosoft programming, and butchered the job so badly that I can
never
use a neuro again! Do you know what it's like to have that...
taken from you
...once you've.../ His words failed him, as he remembered the pain and the humiliation of losing the neurolink that had made him a highly valued survey pilot, equally skilled in the cockpit and the datanet.

/// I believe I can imagine your pain, ///

the quarx answered softly.

Bandicut was startled by the answer; then he glimpsed an impression of what it was like for a quarx to lose a host, to lose his only direct connection to life, to the rest of the physical universe except through the mechanical translator, to lose the one being who provided intimacy and immediacy of thought.

/// And my predecessor...

helped you to bridge that gap.

Is that correct? ///

/Yes,/ Bandicut whispered, envisioning the link that Charlie-One had created to the datanet. /Yes, that was very...satisfying./ He swallowed, almost afraid to ask the next question. /Do you think you could—?/

He felt the quarx's thoughts shifting and adjusting—and he realized that Charlie-Two had been growing, unfolding, remembering, and learning ever since his awakening. Perhaps this Charlie had potential, after all.

/// I don't know. ///

/Oh./ He sighed softly. /I guess I shouldn't have expected—/

/// But I'd be willing to try. ///

Bandicut felt his heart skip. It took him a moment to remember that it was as much a part of the quarx's plan as his. But that was okay. Why shouldn't the quarx benefit, too?

/// But now,

I think you need to pay attention to the docs.

It looks like they're trying to wake you up. ///

/Mm?/ He looked back at the little monitor that the quarx had given him, and saw the faces of the nurse and medtechs peering down at him. He felt a stirring of sensation, and...a lance of pain. /Owww!/

/// Sorry.

Wrong connection. ///

The pain faded, and in place of it he felt the stirrings of muscular ability. His eyelids were fluttering. The small monitor image grew to fill his vision.

"You okay there?" someone was saying.

"Ahh—" he grunted. It wasn't the pain that made him grunt, it was the difficulty of regaining control over his body.

"Take it easy," said Switzer's gravelly voice. "It's going to hurt some, until you heal."

Bandicut nodded, his head heavy on the table. "What
was
that stuff?" he breathed.

"Hah. Escalomethorphin. Worked like a charm, didn't it?" Switzer stepped up, beaming. He seemed proud of the way they had knocked him out in a matter of seconds. "We got your leg set, and you're wearing a fastract unit. If you don't mind a little pain, we can let you walk out of here." He shook a finger at Bandicut. "Just don't plan on working or doing anything hard for at least four days, maybe five."

"I wasn't—
ow!
What the hell was that?" He looked down at his leg, ignoring Switzer's cackle, and saw that the nurse had just stuck him with another syringe, a big one.