A reluctant smile tugged at his lips. “Very well.” He took my hand and raised it for a kiss. “Never let it be said that I dishonored the wishes of my Chosen.”
“Keep up that attitude, and we’ll get along just fine,” I said with a tired smile. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw something strange. A group of dark-robed beings was moving slowly through the aisles between beds several yards away from us. Then I realized who they were, and my smile flattened.
“Excuse me, Kao. I have to take care of something.”
I made my way toward the group. Like hungry buzzards, the six Bartermen were going from patient to patient. A pause, a quiet exchange, then they moved on. I blocked their path and crossed my arms. My foot was tapping. Yes, I was upset.
“Are you infected?” I demanded without preliminaries.
“Bartermen are not infected.” One slid back a hood to regard me with ferocious dislike behind a containment suit mask.
“Unbelievable.” I recoiled slightly. “Is there anything you ghouls won’t do for barter?”
“Bartermen do not define methods.”
“Why are you bothering my patients? Don’t you have any common decency?”
“Bartermen have trade opportunities.” The repugnant creature gazed at the rows of beds with what could only be described as greedy glee. “Bartermen take them.”
“Yeah? Well, you can take yourselves out of here. At once.”
“Bartermen are not leaving.”
I was prepared for that, and signaled to a member of the Security team. “Last chance.” I nodded to the officer, who lifted his weapon and took aim at the center of the group.
“Bartermen do not-“
“Shut up.” I turned my back on them, knowing it was an insult, wishing I could give the order to shoot.
“Get these leeches out of my facility.”
The group drew back, and hissed something at me that my TI didn’t pick up. I looked over my shoulder.
The speaker stepped forward and pointed a finger at me. “You need trade,” he said. “Bartermen will remember. No trade for you.”
I pressed a hand to my heart and mimed cardiac arrest. “I’m devastated.”
The Security officer made a curt gesture with his weapon. The hood was pulled back up, and the Barterman rejoined his group.
“Not yet,” the Barterman said. From the dark pit of his robe, his eyes gleamed. “But soon.” They left, a security guard right behind them.
The Bartermen and that evil prediction were quickly forgotten as I got back to the present crisis. There wasn’t going to be time to synthesize a vaccine from my blood, not here. Like Dloh and Crhm, I found myself trotting between cots, scanning and intubating as fast as I could.
“Doctor, I need you over here-“ a nurse called, struggling with a patient who was violently heaving against her hands. At the same time, Dr. Dloh scuttled by and asked me to assist him with a difficult ventilation.
I took care of the nurse first.
Dloh was pulling a sheet up over his patient when I reached his side. I held back his appendage for a moment and recognized the patient’s pain-racked features. Akamm, the expert whump-ball con artist, white now with death.
“Oh, no.”
“The ezophageal flap was obztructed, I could not induct the tube,” Dloh said, and then coughed. “Dr.
Grey Veil - thiz iz out of control.”
“I’m sorry.” I touched the boy’s cooling cheek, then covered his face myself. “Damn it. We have to do something!”
“What iz the alternative?” Dloh made a hopeless sound. “We can try to keep them comfortable until the end comez. But”- he coughed once more, the force shaking all of his appendages-“I can’t watch them all die.”
Neither could I. The research I needed to do on my own blood would take too long. I’d have to forgo the hope of a vaccine for now and try something more direct.
“Listen, my friend, there may be an alternative.” I described the events and circumstances that led me to believe the pathogen was sentient. Dloh seemed skeptical, but kept listening. “I’ve got to revive Reever again. He’s the only one who can tell us what to do.”
“The chief gave orderz to keep him zedated.”
I fixed my gaze on him. “Tell me you have a better idea.”
Dloh thought it over and then made a defeated gesture. “If you attempted zuch a prozedure’t . . I am zure to be occupied and unable to obzerve...”
“Thanks, Doctor.” I gazed around until I had located Reever’s cot. “Ecla,” I called to the nurse, who hurried over. In a lowered tone I said, “Prepare to revive Chief Linguist Reever.”
Reever seemed to come out of the sedation more slowly this time. I was careful to keep a syrinpress within reach. At last he focused, and his lips moved, but no sound came out.
“Reever,” I bent close. “We’re in trouble. Can you establish a connection with the Core?”
Ecla monitored his vitals on her scanner. “Not good,” she advised me. “Another few minutes at the most.”
“Duncan!” I said, and his hands suddenly seized mine. This time he did not enter my mind.
I entered his.
I was in a tunnel of wind and light and blazing, relentless pain. Reever drew me in, his consciousness just ahead, out of reach. Reever, help me!
Not enough time. I could barely make out his thought patterns. Must return... dwellings.
What are you talking about?
Return the Core... Cherijo... hurry...
Distantly, far beyond our link, something went wrong. I heard Ecla shouting, felt the syrinpress wrenched from my hand. The link broke abruptly.
I saw the nurse sedating Reever in mid-seizure. Apparently she’d knocked me away from him, as I found myself on the floor, sitting on my abused buttocks. The Psyoran turned to me after she’d finished restraining the chief linguist’s writhing body.
“Mind telling me-“ I felt something dripping from the front of my tunic and looked down. “What the hell?” Amber fluid soaked my tunic, covering my chest, abdomen, and thighs.
“He tried to push you away before he went into seizure. That came out of his cranial orifices. It moved like it was - it looked like”- Ecla faltered, her expression one of horror-“like it was trying to get into your mouth.”
I had no time to be disgusted. Besides, it wasn’t doing anything now but staining my clothes.
“Take a sample for analysis.” I stripped off my tunic and handed it to her. My thin undershirt was soaked as well. “I have to clean up, and talk to the chief.”
We lost another thirteen patients. A temporary display console was put together and connected to the colonial database. At last I was able to signal the FreeClinic. Hooray for portable technology. Dr. Mayer responded within moments.
“We’ll lose more of them,” I said after giving him the statistics. “There’s only one option left.”
The chiefs face appeared haggard. “What do you suggest?”
“Treat this pathogen as a sentient.”
He chuckled bitterly. “You really are deranged.”
“Hear me out. As an intelligent life-form, wouldn’t the anaerobe regard being trapped in Karas’s lungs as a threat to itself?”
“There is no anaerobic microorganism capable of intellectual reasoning.”
“That we know of,” I said. “Reever called the pathogen the Core.”
“He called something the Core,” Mayer said. “It proves nothing.”
Proof. What was unique to the pathogen that would prove its sentience? Why were they killing the host?
What were they thinking?
“If you were imprisoned in an alien environment, you’d try to free yourself,” I said. “The symptoms of the contagion may be a counterattack.”
“An effort to kill the host body?”
“The pneumonia it induces does in the end.” I ignored his raised brows.
“You still can’t explain why the contagion doesn’t show up on our scanners.”
An image of Karas’s lungs sprang to mind. The missing tissue. Not destroyed - replaced?
“What if it could mimic the tissue it inhabited? By replacing native cells, simulating their structure and chemical signature, it would remain undetectable.”
“Preposterous!”
“It’s the only reason to explain why it doesn’t read on the scanners, why biodecon doesn’t destroy it. It becomes part of the body. A defense mechanism, like protective coloration.”
“This is absolute nonsense.” Mayer looked ready to strangle me. “Listen to what you’re saying!”
I’d gone this far. “The pneumonia they induce could also be the only possible means they have of escaping - by killing our bodies.”
“And transmission?”
“We know it can’t be airborne. Saliva, or perhap”- I glanced over at Kao, who was now sleeping-“sexual transmission.”
“Since none of the original cases experienced such intimate contact with each other-“
“Smaller amounts of fluid could still prove a viable transmission vehicle for a single-celled organism,” I said. “Involuntary discharges they could access and control.” I made the last connection. “Coughing.
Sneezing.”
Cold symptoms.
“You’ll have to analyze a fresh sample of sputum to prove your theory,” Mayer said. I didn’t bother to tell him the pathogen could probably imitate sputum and anything else contained in a life-form. “None of this warrants putting Reever at risk for another seizure. Don’t try to revive him.”
“I won’t. I already have.”
“I see.” Mayer’s voice dropped a dozen degrees. “Is he still alive?”
“Yes. He began to seize, and we sedated him. Apparently the anaerobe has migrated to his brain.”
“What did he tell you?”
“That the Core must be returned to their dwelling.”
“More episodal gibberish.”
“No. It was Reever. He’s trying to communicate.” I just didn’t mention it was by linking our minds together. I’d pushed the chief far enough.
“You want to base treatment on a ridiculous theory and the delirious utterings of a patient in mid-seizure.”
“I’d welcome an alternative theory,” I said with exaggerated congeniality. “Got one?”
“A vaccine.”
I recalled the blood sample. “We’re working on that, too.” I explained about the tests I’d ordered, skipping the part about it being my blood or that I’d injected a dying patient with it. I claimed it was from a Terran who had been exposed to the contagion but not contracted it as of yet.
Mayer considered this for a moment. “I’ll do the analysis personally,” he said at last. His eyes glared. “I should remove you from duty for reviving Chief Linguist Reever.”
“I’m sorry I ignored your orders.” No, I wasn’t.
“Keep that man sedated or you will be held responsible for his death. Do you understand me?”
I nodded, and terminated the connection. When I turned around, I saw Dr. Dloh being carried off to a cot.
I got up and walked toward the front of the building. Just outside the entrance, an unending line of patients waited to be admitted. One of the nurses advised me that case count now stood at over four hundred, and Security was preparing a second storage facility for the overflow.
If this didn’t work, we were all dead.
Paradise turned into Purgatory.
Kevarzangia Two’s lush splendor appeared to dwindle as I watched. Perhaps it was the exhaustion. Or maybe I just couldn’t see the beauty anymore. My eyes were filled with the faces of my patients. So many of them - twisting in pain, gasping for life, motionless in death.
The epidemic smashed through the colony, and hundreds of cases swelled to thousands. Most of those infected came flooding into the temporary facility, desperate to be cured. My job was to examine them, make them comfortable, try to keep them alive as long as possible.
I did my job. They still died.
There was no reprieve from K2V1, no cessation of the work that had to be done. Every hour’s demands strained our capacity to deal with the overwhelming numbers. There was a thin edge between disaster and destruction, and we were teetering on it.
The intubation equipment ran out first.
“I need more ventilators,” I demanded during one exchange with MedAdmin. “Patients are dying.”
“You have everything in current inventory.”
I didn’t want to talk about stock levels. “Get more.”
“Have you consulted with the Bartermen?”
I winced. “The request would be better coming from someone else.”
“We’ll do the best we can. I can’t promise you-“
“No.” I turned from the screen. “Don’t promise me anything.”
Familiar faces jumped out of the endless blur of bodies. Patients I had treated in the FreeClinic, neighbors, staff members. I didn’t know what to say to them. I lied anyway. Some begged me to help them. Others seemed to know I couldn’t save them and turned away from me.
I passed my scanner over a patient, checked and cleared airways, made a chart notation. On to the next. I did it over and over, a hundred times, a thousand. I looked into their eyes. I held their trembling hands, claws, tendrils. I listened to their prayers. I watched them die.
I checked on Kao whenever I had a spare moment, which wasn’t often. He remained very weak, unable to do more than sit up for short periods. I worried the pathogen might be retaking lost ground, and God only knew what my Terran blood was doing to his internal systems. At last I drew a sample of his blood and sent it over to the FreeClinic for analysis.
“Doc?”
My gritty eyes lifted from the dead Chandral female I was tagging for removal.
Kyle Springfield stood across the cot from me. The aggressive, insolent Terran teenager was gone. In his place was someone much older and wearier.
“Hey, Kyle.” I looked at the dead woman I was crouched next to. Imagined Kyle’s face on her body.
“Be with you in just a minute.”
“Doc, please.” He reached for my arm, touched me. “Can you help my dad?” He pointed across the rows of cots. “He’s in trouble.”
“All right.” I got to my feet and let him lead me.
Harold Springfield was on a respirator, and a woman with Kyle’s eyes sat holding his limp hand. She barely glanced at us, her face blank with the too-familiar shock and bewilderment. I’d seen that same expression on hundreds of faces in the past days.
“He’s not breathing right,” Kyle said, pointing to the ventilator’s panel. “He started shaking, real bad, and then - and then-“ The scan was complete before he finished speaking. He saw my face, and his shoulders sagged. “My dad’s dead, isn’t he?”