Plague of Memory (17 page)

"Are the outlaws still in the city?" I asked my husband.

He did not stop scanning the area around us, and only adjusted his hold on his pulse rifle so that he could rest a hand on my neck. "We will not wait to find out."

Qonja, who had stationed himself on my other side, eyed my husband before smiling at me. "All will be well, Healer."

With outlaws attacking the quarantined, the Hsktskt searching their own city, and Reever so agitated that he had to hold me like a wayward jlorra cub, I doubted that.

Back on board the ship, the entire jaunt team was subjected to a thorough biodecon before being immediately escorted to the captain's briefing room. I sat down and sipped a server of something that was supposed to taste like idleberry tea while the men related what had happened to Xonea and the senior members of the crew. Reever asked me to describe what I had seen of the attack and the strange outlaw, and with great reluctance I did so.

As soon as I finished speaking, I glanced at the other men. From their expressions, it seemed that no one believed me.

"There are none of our people on Vtaga save those we sent with you." Xonea turned on the Adan ClanLeader. "Are you missing any men?"

"All of my kin have reported back to the ship." The ClanLeader offered me a reassuring smile. "There is no shame in making such a mistake, Lady. Fear often clouds the mind and, at times, plays tricks on the vision."

"There is a humanoid male among the Hsktskt outlaws. He has dark blue skin, all-white eyes, and the skin mark of HouseClan Torin on his throat," I repeated carefully. "I was not mistaken or hysterical. I saw him clearly. My eyes functioned without impairment."

The men said nothing for a time. Some looked at me, while others looked away.

"I am a battlefield surgeon," I reminded them. "I have done my work under direct enemy fire on the ice for many seasons. I did not panic and I never mistook a Toskald for an Iisleg. I know what I saw. That outlaw was a Jorenian." From their expres
sions I could tell they still did not believe me. "Why do you doubt what I say?"

"The device on your head," one of the men said, gesturing to the band. "Could it have made you hallucinate?"

"It is simply a monitoring device," I assured him. "It can only record my brain activity, not distort it."

Finally Salo shifted in his seat. "What you saw, Healer, simply could not be. Jorenian HouseClans always know where their kin are. If we did not, we could not protect each other."

"What about the Torin who stayed behind on your homeworld?" Reever asked suddenly. "Could one of them have come to Vtaga for some reason, or been captured and made a slave, without your knowledge?"

The captain shook his head. "All Torin are here on the
Sunlace
or back on the homeworld. We would have been informed if one of our kin chose to travel alone, and alerted if any went missing. HouseClan honor requires us to perform immediate search and rescue."

"Perhaps the outlaw's skin mark was altered to look like that of your clan," Tlore, the Adan Clan-Leader, suggested. "The Torin have taken a prominent part in the peace talks between the League and the Hsktskt. It may be an attempt to defame your kin, through use of some being alterformed to appear Jorenian."

That theory made the men begin muttering among themselves. Reever had already spoken to me of the new alterform technology, which manipulated DNA to transform beings of one species into
another. The bioengineered beings had usually been utilized by the League for intelligence gathering or infiltration during the war, and there had been rumors that the Hsktskt now possessed the technology

"I am more likely to believe this outlaw an alter-form than an escaped Jorenian slave," Xonea said.

This also puzzled me. "Why?"

"No Jorenian would voluntarily live among the Hsktskt," the captain informed me in a peculiar tone, "and none who have been made slaves in the past survived long in captivity."

I folded my arms. "Teulon Jado survived more than two years after being made a slave."

"He took back his freedom, such as it was." His gaze turned as cold as a dark-season ice storm. "Are you certain it was not another humanoid species? One that is dark-skinned and light-eyed, like us?"

I wanted to agree with Xonea simply to be done with the matter, and to remove that coldness from his eyes, but I could not. "He looked like a Jorenian. He had the skin mark of a Torin."

"There is one manner in which we can verify the healer's claim," Qonja said. "With the permission of the Hsktskt, I will scan the surface of the planet for Jorenian life signs. Among this population, they will be simple to locate."

It was an excellent idea. The Hsktskt were coldblooded reptilians, while the Jorenians were warmblooded humanoids. The outlaw would show up very differently on long-range bioscans.

"Telling the Hsktskt that a rogue Jorenian may have led the attack on their medical facility would
not be wise," the captain said. "They may decide that we are responsible, and attack the
Sunlace."

"You need not tell them you are scanning for a Jorenian," I said, feeling slightly exasperated. "You need not lie, either. Merely say Qonja is scanning for beings that may be carrying exotic pathogens."

"That is not true."

"It is partial truth," I countered. "Jorenians carry many types of natural bacteria in their bodies that can be considered exotic."

Xonea scowled as if my suggestion offended him. "Deception will not endear us to the Hsktskt."

"Neither will discovering that they have a rogue Jorenian among these outlaws," my husband pointed out, "or that we kept our knowledge of it from them."

"Very well." A light flickered on Xonea's console, and he glanced at the screen. "The Senior Healer summons you to Medical, Cherijo. That is where you directed the female Hsktskt to report?"

The attack on the medical facility had severely damaged the forensics section, so ChoVa had agreed to bring to the ship the body of one patient who had died while in cryopreservation. It was the only way I could convince her to agree to allow me to perform an autopsy.

"Yes, she is waiting for me." I rose and looked around the room. "I may return to Vtaga with Healer ChoVa after we have examined the body?"

Reever and Xonea both started to speak at once. "I can only do one thing," I reminded them. "Not two. Agree first before you issue orders." "As long as security is reestablished, and your es

cort is increased and better armed, I will permit it," Xonea said.

My husband remained silent, but the stillness of his features made me think that he was again displeased with me. I thanked the captain and left the conference room, wondering as I went to the lift if my marriage was going to survive this plague any better than the Hsktskt.

When I arrived in Medical, the Omorr was waiting for me, and bounced across the deck toward me with visible agitation.

"Where have you been?"

"Telling men things they did not wish to hear. Was I needed here?" I turned to view the ward, but several patients had been discharged, and those who remained were quiet and appeared in stabilized condition.

"Your Hsktskt is waiting for you to attend this autopsy." He indicated an examination room on the far side of the bay that was commonly used for laboratory cultures and specimen analyses. "I thawed the remains for her."

"I thank you." His stare made me glance down at my garments, which were soiled with smoke, dust, and suspension fluid. "I did not have time to change."

"The state of your clothing is irrelevant. Are you hurt?" I shook my head, but he removed the headband device I wore, checked it, and inspected me as if I were bleeding from every opening. "You should have come here first. I told Reever that I would have to examine you. What was he thinking?"

"We were escorted from the launch bay to the briefing room on the captain's orders. You should complain to him." I went to a garment-storage unit to remove a scrub gown, mask, and gloves, and then stepped behind a screen to strip. "I see you have released Knofki." I was glad the boy no longer had to be confined to a berth. "Did you decide when we can start the fittings for Dapvea's prostheses?"

He made no reply, and when I looked around the edge of the screen I saw that his gildrells were so stiff they hardly moved. He was angry with me again.

"We will talk about the patients later," I said as I finished dressing. "Why were you not at this briefing? I had expected to see you there."

"You expect me to leave a female Hsktskt here, in my Medical Bay, to do as she pleases?" He sniffed. "I think not."

"ChoVa will not harm anyone. She may be reptilian, but she is no different than us." I came out from behind the screen and pulled on the gloves. "We cannot help her people if we treat them as if they all suffer from filth-born fleshrot."

"Leprosy," Squilyp snapped.

"As you say." Perhaps I had offended him by not asking his permission to bring the female Hsktskt on board. "Senior Healer, I would have performed this procedure on the planet, but the forensic lab at their facility was all but destroyed, and it was not safe to travel to another." I looked at the lower deck. "Next time I promise that I will signal first."

"Stop doing that!" the Omorr shouted, making me jump. When two nurses stared at us, he brought his temper back under control and added in an almost-level tone, "The Adan signaled the ship the moment the facility was attacked. Then, when I saw the Hsktskt walk in here as if she were in charge ... " He made a swift, frustrated gesture.

"I am well," I assured him. "The Hsktskt will not take over the ship. ChoVa is only here to help me with the autopsy. I regret that our actions caused you worry and concern. Please forgive me."

His facial skin darkened. "If you cringe in front of me one more time, I vow I will give you a real reason to do so." He hopped away into his office.

I frowned as I pulled a scrub mask over my head and tucked it under my chin. I did not fear the Omorr, exactly. The Senior Healer might have a terse and unfriendly demeanor—rather like Hasal, Teulon's second on Akkabarr—but most ensleg males who were not Jorenian seemed to be the same. Still, my attempts to placate his surly moods were not proving to be very effective. Perhaps I would ask his mate if there were some ensleg behavior of which I was ignorant.

ChoVa had already prepared the body for autopsy, I saw as I walked into the isolation room. The Hsktskt healer looked bigger and more alien here, where I was accustomed to only Jorenians, but I felt closer to her than I had on the planet. Perhaps our brush with death at the facility had created an unspoken bond between us, or I simply trusted her more because of it.

"Do you wish to dissect or examine?" I asked her. "I wish to be a hundred light-years from this place," she said, pulling down the large mask

covering her lower jaw. "Naked and basking in the warmth of an alien star."

"I do not think I can arrange that," I admitted. "They have round rooms with machines that simulate such places here on the ship that you may use. After the autopsy, perhaps."

"Yes, the autopsy." She made a soft hiss that was almost a sigh. "You are the surgical expert; I know my species. You dissect, I will examine."

I had not performed many autopsies on Akkabarr—there had rarely been time to worry about how our men died—but the procedure was a simple one and, as before, my hands remembered what my mind did not.

ChoVa switched on the console audio data recorder. "Autopsy on adult male Hsktskt, rank centuron, age forty-four rev," she said as I made a long, three-sided center incision down the middle of the corpse. "Preliminary cause of death thought to be cellular breakdown as a result of infectious unidentified pathogen and extended cryopreservation."

The reptilian's body cavity contained many organs I had never before seen. The same odd familiarity, however, again flooded my thoughts as I studied how the organs were arranged. Some part of me knew what the organ systems were and how they functioned. Following standard procedure, I examined the area surrounding the large cardiac organ before excising it and placing it in a specimen tray.

ChoVa retrieved the tray and took it to the medical scanner console. "Outer cardiac layer displays tissue necrosis consistent with cryo-crystallization," she said as she placed it in the organ processor's recess, which scanned it for other imperfections. "No enlargement, unrelated damage, or other defects. Harvesting specimens for further analysis."

As I continued dissecting, ChoVa examined and removed tissue specimens from several areas of each organ I handed to her. She helped me turn the body to take a sample of spinal tissue and fluid, and then stepped back as I used a lascalpel to cut open the cranial case and remove the yellow-pink cerebral organ.

The Hsktskt brain was much larger than those of most humanoid species, and possessed three distinct hemispheres and a dozen gland clusters that needed separate examination. Once the whole brain had been scanned, I dissected it on a smaller adjoining table and harvested the clusters one by one.

Only one set of glands did not appear normal, and I called ChoVa over to confirm this. "Is this more damage from the cryo?"

She studied the inflamed specimen. "No. From where did you remove these?" When I pointed to the corresponding section, she shook her head and retrieved the cluster with a pair of forceps. "They must be diseased."

As I was finished with the brain, I joined her at the scanner console. The display showed no trace of disease, but it did flag an unusually high concentration of an enzyme not normally present in the cluster.

"Tohykul," she said.

I did not know the word. "What is that?"

"A mistake." After she repeated the cluster scan a second and third time with the same results, she grew impatient. "Do you have another unit? This one is obviously malfunctioning."

I went out and retrieved a portable scanner unit we used on the ward, wheeled it in, and waited as she conducted a fourth scan. The same elevated enzyme level appeared on the portable's display.