Authors: Alan Dean Foster
Thursday afternoon was one of the two she had set aside for engaging in the ancient medicinal enterprise. Some of the visits she made were pro bono; her way of fulfilling her share of the mandatory national medical service. Leaving her corner of the shared offices, she took the lift down to the first subterranean garage level. Like everything else in Greater Savannah it was tightly sealed against the eventual inevitable intrusion of the ever-rising Atlantic.
Able to afford more than a scoot, her personal vehicle had four wheels. The built-to-order back end contained a complete portable medical facility, touted by its manufacturer as the “hospital in a trunk.” It was not quite that, but Ingrid could do in the field what most twentieth-century medical facilities required the contents of entire buildings to accomplish.
Powered by a single battery slab her car could not achieve a high rate of speed, but it was more than adequate for traveling around the metropolitan area and taking her as far as the outlying suburbs. A good deal of the Carolinas and Georgia was still rural, especially those districts that impinged on national or international nature preserves, and many of their denizens could not afford to come into Savannah or Jacksonville for advanced medical care. It was while working among the poorest of her clients that she felt the greatest satisfaction. The government covered basic medical needs, but beyond that patients were on their own.
Among the worst cases she saw were those involving botched melds.
As a Natural, she was not expected to be sympathetic. All melds were elective, and many Naturals felt that those who chose to undergo such procedures could hardly expect understanding from their fellow citizens should adverse consequences result. That she was at all times empathetic always impressed her clients, be they highly paid businessmen or low income specialty farmers and fisherfolk.
The afternoon was unexceptional, featuring a ten-minute pause to let one of the almost-daily equatorial downpours burn itself out over the city. She had read that there was a time in the past when such heavy tropical
rains had been far less frequent in the southeastern states. But there had also been a time when Old Savannah, like Old Nawlins, had actually sat on dry ground instead of having to be raised up on stilts. Having grown up in such surroundings she felt perfectly comfortable among them, of course. Ancient history was full of surprising revelations.
As the characteristically sultry afternoon wore on and she dispensed the usual much appreciated advice, recommendations, medications, injections, and minor meld repairs, her curiosity was stirred only twice. Once by an ill Natural sixteen-year-old boy who the instrumentation in the rear of her car diagnosed as suffering from dengue-h fever. She treated him and advised his concerned parents to bring him into the city for a checkup and possible isolation treatment. The second case involved a would-be professional model living in an expensive floating coastal codo whose melded left leg was showing signs of degradation of gengineered calcium sponge. An injection temporarily relieved the young woman’s discomfort and Ingrid advised her to seek a consultation with the original surgeon, with an eye toward a possible remeld. This advice was not received enthusiastically.
The sun was on its way down and she was already contemplating dinner options when she parked in front of the house in the woods.
It fronted a private forestry concern. Behind the house hectares of rocket pine thrust bright green needles toward the recently rain-swept sky. Gengineered to provide two harvestable crops a year on poor soil, rocket pine had replaced peanuts and tobacco as a ready cash crop throughout many of the southern states. While the advent of electronic readers had replaced the need for newsprint throughout the world, no one had yet come up with an electronic substitute for paper towels or toilet paper. Additionally, private forests supplied incidental habitat for a far greater diversity of fauna than other farms while simultaneously serving as excellent buffers for nature and wildlife preserves.
Runoff from the recent sticky downpour was still trickling into holding ponds and tanks as Ingrid got out of the car. With her medogic tucked under one arm she strode toward the front entrance, tiptoeing around the occasional puddle. Dinner was very much on her mind.
The worried woman who met her obviously had other concerns.
“I can’t believe anyone does this,” she murmured gratefully as she invited the doctor inside. Her comment was typical of the reaction Ingrid
received on no less than ninety-nine percent of her house calls. “Thank you for coming on such short notice.” Turning, she led the doctor deeper into the spotless residence.
“You’re welcome.” Ingrid never said “It’s my job.” If she did, the flow of gratitude tended never to cease and interfered with her work.
A slidestair carried them to a second floor. The view out a flex window shifted continuously from one end of the property to the other. A few steps down an interior hallway and the mother halted briefly, waiting on a door to open.
“It’s our daughter, Cara,” she whispered nervously. “She didn’t want us to call you. She doesn’t want to see a doctor. I think she’s embarrassed.”
According to the stats Ingrid’s office had downloaded and that had been transferred to her medogic, Cara Jean Gibson was a fifteen-year-old girl. Simply
being
a fifteen-year-old girl was embarrassing. Entering the room, Ingrid was mentally primed to confront the expected. Acne, gawkiness insufficiently improved by low-grade over-the-counter manips, badly gengineered hair, failed skin toning resulting in possible fever.
She was not prepared for what she actually encountered.
Cara Gibson was lying on a traditional bed. The underneath was fibernet, but from the looks of it the antique feather mattress on top had been lovingly restored and maintained. In contrast, the girl’s head rested on a thoroughly modern aeromuse pillow that had doubtless been programmed to play her favorite music depending on how she shifted the weight of her head against it. For all Ingrid knew it was hammering away right now, transmitting the latest goolmech to the girl via direct acoustic transduction. If it was, the tune she was listening to was not a happy one.
Eyes widening at the sight of the newcomer, Cara responded to the intrusion in no uncertain terms. “Moma! I
told
you—no doctors!”
Ingrid put on her most sympathetic girl-girl smile. “How do you know I’m a doctor?”
The teen grunted, as if the visitor’s identity was the most obvious thing in the world. “Musth! You barely glanced at my face before your eyes went to my head.”
Ingrid spoke gently as she advanced toward the bed. “May I see your head?”
Cara Gibson turned over sharply to face the wall instead of her mother and the stranger. “Why not? It seems like everybody
else
wants to.”
At least with her patient facing the other direction Ingrid did not have to worry about maintaining an empathetic smile. The girl’s turn had revealed what should have been a fairly simple cosmetic meld gone wrong. It was a full quill implant, standard scarlet macaw. Bright yellow, dark blue, and intense red feathers flared in the currently favored Mohawk crest from the top front of the girl’s otherwise shaven skull down to the middle of her back. The meld ensured that the feathers would continue to grow exactly as they might from the body of the bird that had provided the template DNA. Unless the meld was deleted, of course.
Ingrid unfolded her medogic. “I have to scan you to see what’s gone wrong, Cara. I need your permission.”
“Like my mother didn’t already give you permission. Oh, go ahead.” The girl didn’t turn to watch. “I don’t care. I’m a mess anyway.”
“Maybe we can fix that.” When the patient didn’t reply Ingrid proceeded to activate the medogic. “And thank you for giving me
your
permission.”
The readings were about what she expected based on her preliminary visual observation. Whoever had performed the meld had either used an insufficiency of bonding protein or the wrong one. More than half the quill line had refused to integrate with the underlying bone. As a result, feathers were falling out right and left. People who had undergone feather melds, often more than one, were willing to worry about appearance, but not molting.
She placed the open medogic on a nearby end table. “I think it can be fixed, Cara.”
That brought the girl’s face and attention back around. Her attitude underwent an immediate shift. “Really? You’re not just scraping me? Joelle Richards said that once the quills start to come out you have to delete the whole meld and then there’s internal bone scarring that has to be smoothed out and …”
Reaching over, Ingrid gave the girl a reassuring pat on her upper arm. “Depends on the severity of the breakdown. I’m pretty sure yours is salvageable.” She glanced at the mother standing nearby. “First we need to treat the infection. I know it looks bad, but it’s not ampstaph or anything like that. A shot of polyotic should clear it right up.” She turned her attention back to the now alert teen. “I’ll give you a couple of names and addresses. I’m not in a building that specializes in these kinds of melds, and
you definitely want a specialist to perform the repairs, but the references I’m going to leave with your mom are for melders I know personally. Either of them should be able to restore your crest.” She spared a second glance for the obviously relieved parent.
“It won’t be cheap, but this time it will be done right, and the work will be guaranteed.”
The grateful mother lurched forward. “Thank you, Dr. Seastrom, thank you! Cara …”
Mother and daughter embraced. Both were crying. Gathering up the medogic, Ingrid folded it carefully and let herself out into the hallway. To her ongoing dismay, dealing with botched melds constituted a fair share of her work. It was an unending source of amazement to her that despite the almost daily reports of deaths and disfigurements caused by unlicensed practitioners, people continued to seek out and make use of backstreet melders. Such decisions all boiled down to money, though she could not for the life of her imagine that any such savings were worth the potential risks.
Take Cara Gibson, for example. Probably engaged someone to do the feather work who had been “recommended” by a friend. A cheap unauthorized melder operating out of the back of a truck. The loss of feathers was nothing. Far more significant was the infection that had resulted from the incompetent work. Left untreated, it could have developed into something far more serious. One touch of ampstaph in the girl’s upper spine could have left her paralyzed for life. Or at the very least in need of an emergency extensive back meld.
Not wishing to interrupt the emotional mother-daughter bonding, she occupied herself reviewing the medogic’s readings. Infection type and rate there, recommended polyotic dosage so-and-so, muscular trauma rating, neural welds so many, growth points so many …
How now—what was that?
She scrolled back and enlarged one portion of the readout. There were forty-six points of quillgrow attachment along the girl’s skull, neck, and spine. Forty-five of them were fashioned from the expected patented custom blend of gengineered carbon and melded proteins. The forty-sixth …
Most obviously, it had been installed deeper in the back of Cara Gibson’s skull than was necessary. Not dangerously so, but just enough for the
abnormality to register on Ingrid’s sensitive medogic. The insert did not call attention to itself and could easily be overlooked. In fact, had Ingrid not been wiling away the time in the hall the information would have been automatically compressed, filed, and forgotten the instant she shut down the device. She had caught the anomaly only thanks to boredom.
Like the other attachment points it was composed of familiar organic staples, none of them expensive. That, and something else. There was an—impurity. This in itself was not what drew Ingrid’s attention. It was the nature of the adulteration. In her experience, impurities tended to be irregular in form and composition. This one was anything but.
For one thing, it glistened.
After checking the readout for a third time to ensure that the anomaly was real and not a program aberration, she reentered the room. Sitting at the foot of the bed, the mother looked up in surprise. “Dr. Seastrom: I thought you’d let yourself out.”
Ingrid smiled. “I have to give you those referral names and addresses, remember? And as long as I’m still here, I’d like to draw a protein sample. For future reference and for record-keeping purposes.”
Mother looked down at daughter. The girl responded with a wan smile.
“Okay—I guess.” Having come to trust her visitor implicitly, Cara turned over onto her stomach.
Thinner than a human hair and programmed by Seastrom via the medogic, the intelligent probe snaked its way painlessly into the back of the girl’s head. Finding what it sought, it excised the abnormality that had intrigued the doctor and retracted without damaging any of the surrounding tissue. The periosteum through which the anomaly had been removed would continue to hold its feather.
Ingrid did not bother to examine the extraction and packed it away. While she could have executed an assessment on the spot she did not want to do anything that might upset the reunited and relieved mother and daughter. First she needed to satisfy her patient. Satisfaction of her own curiosity could wait until she was back in her building. Tomorrow was Saturday. Her office would be closed, and she could slip down from her codo at her leisure to scrutinize the curious finding in depth. She gave a mental shrug. Odd as its composition appeared to be on the medogic readout, the identity of the anomaly would probably yield to a simple, straightforward analysis. Most likely she was obsessing over nothing.
As she escorted the doctor out of the house, the comforted mother wanted to add a bonus to Ingrid’s fee. The doctor would not hear of it.
“The look of relief on Cara’s face was more than enough for me.”
At the mother’s insistence, however, Ingrid did depart with something called “homemade” bread. To the dubious Seastrom it
looked
as edible as the vacuum-sealed, slickly packaged product one ordered through the usual grocery channels, but confirmation would have to await tasting.