Strangers. Part 4

It was actually very good. The slightly muddy flavor of eels was not something she admired, but she supposed she would get used to it. The alien Cho'en jingled softly and flipped her crest.

"It's good," Annia said.

The crest rose to its full upright position. Cho'en stretched her neck slightly, and puffed through the wide nostrils under her chin. "Iss kind you ssay sso," she hissed. She possessed neither lips nor vocal chords, and her speech was hard to follow.

Something p.r.i.c.ked Annia's leg, and she felt a dry finger stroke her exposed arm below the elbow. She jumped in her seat and dropped her fork. Her hand struck something rubbery that squealed and clicked.

"I'm sorry." Maycee scrambled out of her seat and picked up the meter-long animal that swayed on its hindquarters with its long, pink proboscis waving in Annia's direction. She shook her finger at its face -- or what Annia supposed was its face. It had a short, pink trunk and no visible mouth. Three round, black eyes peered back at Annia.

"No, Puffy. No begging. I'm sorry, Annia. They're not hungry, just opportunists. Bad Puffy."

"They" referred to the handful or so of parti-colored vermiforms that followed Maycee back to her seat and stood up to beg. Their segmented bodies averaged fifty or sixty centimeters in length with a pair of hooked toes for each segment. The number of segments varied from one animal to another. Annia could identify no general pattern in their coloring. Apart from Puffy, who was a universal light grey like the drifting pollen carriers from the trees, they were improbably colored in bright blues, pinks, greens, reds, yellows, blacks and browns. They were striped, spotted and harlequined. She saw one small, blue animal with vivid, green markings like the leaves on the trees. Their coats varied from Puffy's cloud-like down to the spiky whorles and cowlicks on a medium, red-and-white striped animal that seemed content to dig its first pair of toe-feet into the bench by Annia's hip and stretch its soft, pink proboscis toward her plate.

Maycee said, "At least half of these are rightly yours -- that is, they came from your camp -- but they all do everything together. Most likely, when you go to bed tonight, the ones that consider your camp their territory will attach themselves to you. If you feed them some table sc.r.a.ps and scratch around their lung-vents now and then, they can be quite loyal. Even affectionate." Maycee was trying to detach Puffy's toe-feet from the front of her s.h.i.+rt and keep its proboscis out of her plate as she spoke.

After dinner, the red-and-white catpil left the clutch fighting for position over the dinner plates and followed Annia back to the shelter. Three more of the brightly colored animals rippled across the lot and climbed the foundation supports to the platform while Annia watched to make sure that the clones got themselves into their sleeping cabinets. She convinced three of the four to stay outside, but the white-and-red catpil was more persistent than the others. It waited until Annia had both hands full pus.h.i.+ng the blue- and-green animal out of the doorway and simply swarmed over its fellow, past Annia's arm and into the empty sleeping cabinet before Annia could stop it.

It allowed Annia to clasp it around the middle, but it dug its toe-feet into the gel pad and the plastine blanket, and Annia couldn't extract it without damaging her bed. In the end, she let it stay. It kept her awake for a while, clicking softly and twisting around to groom its toe-feet. She finally fell asleep with the catpil jostling gently against her back and the edges of her hard-won data crystal digging into her palm.

The clones woke her in the morning with calisthenics in the tiny walkway between the sleeping cabinets. Annia took the precaution of pulling her red medical smock over her underwear before she squeezed out of the cabinet. The female stiffened at the sight of her, but didn't attack. The male merely murmured, "Doctor is lieutenant in C-med," and continued to pick at the foil wrapper of a food bar.

Annia took it away from him, broke the seal and handed it back. He ate half in one bite. Annia rummaged up a second bar for the female before she opened the front door. The red-and-white catpil rippled out between her feet.

The air was chilly and smelled of burning cellulose fibers and food. The food smell must have drifted into the shelter while Annia held the door open because the clones crowded out behind her, sniffing.

"At rest," Annia said. "No enemies. No fighting." Obviously, the clones weren't going to be satisfied with emergency rations so long as the Charmmes cousins continued to cook in the open.

The female descended the steps and crossed the moss. The male followed her with his head up and his nostrils flared.

Annia followed quickly saying, "Stop. At rest."

As Annia pa.s.sed through the gap in the fence, Maycee looked up from the outdoor hearth in front of the cousins' shelter. "Good morning. Cho'en cooked for five before she left." She handed a plate of food to the female clone. The female pa.s.sed the plate to the soldier.

"We won't impose. We have our own food."

Maycee made a careless gesture with her head, and the bells in her ears jingled. "It's half from your garden anyway. Whoops, come back here." The female clone evidently didn't see anything that looked like a suitable barracks, so she took her plate and turned back toward the black and silver cube of the emergency shelter, which would still be in her short-term memory as a familiar place. Maycee cut her off and steered her back toward the plank table in front of the shack that Maycee and Cho'en used as a shelter. "Sit here. Come here, you." She waggled her hand at the male, and he walked toward her with his plate in front of him. Maycee sat him at the table and waited until both clones began to eat.

"They're not dreadfully bright, are they?" Her lips twitched humorously.

Annia felt defensive. "They have no long-term memory except what has been implanted. It works very well in consistent surroundings."

"Which this isn't." Maycee handed Annia a filled plate of vegetables and some kind of seasoned meat -- probably eel. "It's a problem, isn't it?"

Annia poked with her fork at the chunks of whitish-brown eel. "They'd have been destroyed if I had left them behind."

"You'll have to support them until we can find some kind of work that they can do, and they're not going to be cheap to feed." Maycee sat down with her own plate beside the male clone. "Will you be looking for work in Murrayville?"

"Cyrion. I hoped I could trade lab work or teaching for research facilities at a hospital or university."

Maycee's eyes widened. "You're a doctor? That's the most remarkable coincidence. Cho'en's been jingling for months about wanting a human-trained doctor to supplement gaean healing disciplines. I know she'd be glad to have you help out at the clinic.

"Cho'en?" Annia said.

"She opened the clinic when we saw how hard it was for people to get medical treatment in Murrayville. They had to cure themselves or go to Cyrion if they could afford it."

"I'm looking for a fully-equipped research facility. I'm working on an important project."

Maycee's face fell. "Well, there are three large hospitals in Cyrion, and several smaller clinics and research labs. I know. We looked into all of them when Cho was setting up her clinic. I still have the codes for most of them. You could apply from the tele-fax station outside town."

Maycee set her empty plate on the ground for the catpils. "I hope you find what you're looking for, but in case you don't, would you take a suggestion? It's just that medical jobs are hard to find on Yetfurther since the pharmaceutical expansion stopped expanding, if you know what I mean. If you can't find a place in Cyrion, you'd still be welcome at Cho's clinic. It's primitive, but you'd have more control of your schedule, and Mr. Hollin and Cho'en could help you scrounge whatever equipment you needed."

"I'd like to try the city first," Annia said stiffly.

"Of course," Maycee said. "I hope you'll find something there." She had a nict.i.tating eyelid on the left eye. It closed, leaving a milky film over the silver iris. "I'll get you those satellite codes."

Maycee provided a list of hospital and medical research codes. She included directions to the nearest sub-atmospheric tele-fax station and offered to watch the clones while Annia was away from the camp.

Annia didn't like the idea. "They are dangerous and unpredictable if you don't know the right commands."

A hint of sharpness tightened Maycee's voice. "I'm generally more competent than people suppose. I can handle them."

Annia really didn't want to bring two dangerous and unpredictable clones with her to a public telefax station. They would be less likely to hurt someone at the camp, so Annia left the medical smock with Maycee. In case the clones failed to recognize Maycee as a human to protect, they would see the smock and treat her as a doctor.

The public tele-fax stood just outside the boundary of Murrayville, a plastine and permocrete dome colored in shades of pale and dirt. The individual stations inside were worn and grimy despite the autoclean cycle that ran nightly.

Maycee had not exaggerated the shortage of positions available for medical staff on Yetfurther. Her list didn't just open the auto-fax sites of the more-than-thirty facilities in the city. It opened direct tele-fax lines to the directors of personnel, and, in some cases, the private lines to high-level administrators in the department of Planetary Health. Annia had never liked the face-to-face intimacy of tele-fax, but she had to concede the logic of Maycee's list. No auto-minder would be able to reach Annia in Murrayville where there was evidently no such thing as private tele-fax, much less the more powerful satellite bounce stations.

So she spoke to bureaucrat after bored bureaucrat, begging for any entry-level position from instructor of anatomy to capsule sterilizer in exchange for a corner in which to conduct her own research. The answers were numbingly similar. The head of field studies for the department of planetary health said, "I'm sorry, Ms. Annia, but a.s.suming we can verify your experience and expertise without contacting Federated Systems citizen data, we hardly have the resources to employ the people we have on staff at present."

The chief programmer for employment systems at Elwinna S. Bombay research hospital said, "It just wouldn't be fair to the people we have currently on staff or those on the waiting list ahead of you. Of course, if you had any interest in nursing..."

Annia cut the connection. She wasn't going to sit in a booth programming life-pods. The smaller research and pharmaceutical groups had been kinder. The head of one such enterprise had brightened when Annia described her background in domestic virus technology. "You've actually worked with those systems?" she'd asked.

"It was the basis of my university research."

The middle-aged woman had leaned into the fax pick-up. "We're very excited about that kind of work -- trying to establish a line of domestic viruses to treat polaxis syndrome and related disorders that persistently resist drug treatment. I'll tell you frankly, though, we're grossly under-funded right now. I can't think of a way to squeeze you in."

Annia said, "I'm primarily interested in having a place to pursue my own research. I can barter service."

The woman spread her hands, and made a rueful face. "I don't know what I can tell you. We haven't enough s.p.a.ce or equipment ourselves, but I'm very interested in your work. Please do keep in touch."

Annia wasted more than an hour sorting directories in the hope of turning up something that wasn't on Maycee's list. She became excited about two possibilities only to find that they were subsidiaries of companies she'd already contacted, and their hiring was all done through the parent corporations. She gave up when the credit counter rolled over the one-hundred-credit mark. She'd spent almost an eighth of her small nest egg and accomplished nothing -- just as Maycee Charmmes had predicted.

The irony bit at her. She had risked her life to escape captivity on Guardian. Her Data belonged to her again, and there was nothing to stop her from proving that the most catastrophic plague in human history was due to recur in less than twenty years. Except that she had no equipment and very little credit to her name. She might as well have left the data behind for all the good it did her here.

Chapter 4.

Annia left the tele-fax booth in mid-afternoon and removed the jacket of her uniform. The dark grey flexall resisted dirt and stains and washed easily, but the cut was distinctively Federated Systems. She ought to have something less conspicuous.

How long before someone discovered the missing data from the s.h.i.+p's files? She didn't so much care if the Commonwealth captors found it; even if they traced her to Yetfurther, United Worlds law would uphold her claim to it, but the Commonwealth attack had come in hotly disputed s.p.a.ce, and a Federated Fleet escort had been due to arrive at any time. There was a good chance the s.h.i.+p had already been retaken by its rightful owners. Would they trace her data? She hadn't had time to cover her tracks thoroughly, and indentured personnel were prohibited from any kind of personal research. The Federation took the matter of stolen data very seriously.

Annia stopped walking. The shacks and huts to either side of the street looked wrong to her. She'd missed a turn. She was trying to think where she was in relation to the waterfront when she heard feet tramping in unison along the street. On Ifni, press gangs had marched the streets outside campus dormitories several times a week, and her last encounter with a press gang had been when she was conscripted into service on the Guardian. She automatically backed into an alley between two ramshackle buildings and waited there. A handful of men wearing dark knee breeches and frilled s.h.i.+rts marched past.

Annia was not the only person to retreat from their approach. She saw a woman pull her three children off the street and s.h.i.+eld them with her hands and body. An adolescent girl with a green band tied around her head almost collided with Annia. Annia spun out of the way, then the girl was past, running with long, silent strides.

On the street, men cast their eyes down or turned aside as though their business took them out of the path. No one stopped to look after the marching men. The gang pa.s.sed the alley where Annia stood, and she heard the rhythm of their feet quicken. Annia overcame her instinctive fear and stepped out into the main street. This wasn't Ifni, and the Union didn't use indentured citizens, so they had no need for press gangs.

The leader of the troop wore a blue cap slanted over his brow. He used gestures and clipped words to tell his men to spread out around a nearby shack.

At the rear of the building, a man's head eased from between two boards. His shoulders followed.

He wasn't quick enough. The leader of the soldiers raised his hand, and two of his men threw their weight against the front door of the shack. They were inside before the man in the rear pulled his legs through the gap he had made. Someone shouted inside the house. The two men outside the shack split up. They caught the escaping occupant before he could climb to his feet.

Annia couldn't hear what they said to him. The man crouched on the ground with one hand over his head and made no reply.

The leader of the group kicked him.

Another soldier pulled a heavy projectile driver from its holster on his back. He took aim at the shack.

Annia heard a thick whump. A cylindrical projectile arched through the window of the shack and rattled inside.

The man on the ground yelped a protest, and Annia looked back at him. The leader of the attackers swung a black truncheon down hard on the hand he used to protect his head.

The sound of the blow was muted by distance, but the man's shrill scream made the hair stand up on the back of Annia's neck. There would be bones broken in the hand if not his head. She had supposed that the man was being arrested for a crime, but this was not a humane arrest. Even Federation press gangs didn't treat citizens like this. She looked around for help.

The people walking by on the street had disappeared. Annia saw a curtain twitch in the window of a little, grey-slatted house nearby, but the other shelters might as well have been abandoned.

What could Annia be expected to do for the man? It wasn't her business. She might as well walk away and forget the scene.

The next blow drew another shriek from the man on the ground, and Annia jerked. The beating had commenced in earnest now. Annia's skin crawled each time she heard the dull slap of wood on flesh. Her knees felt shaky, and her heart pounded in her throat, but she took a wobbling step toward the scene. She wasn't sure what she was doing, but adrenaline made her breathing easier and firmed her knees. Her first two attempts to shout at the attackers produced a rasping squeak from her throat. She closed her mouth, swallowed and caught the leader by the sleeve of his ruffled s.h.i.+rt.

She said, "What in the nine states of matter do you think you are doing?" That didn't come out too badly.

He stared. "Who are you? Where did you come from?"

"Tell them to stand back from that man." If he didn't give the order, Annia didn't know what else she could do. Walk into the circle of clubs, she supposed, if she had the courage. It would be a senseless sacrifice -- risking herself and her century plague research for a stranger who, for all she knew, might be a criminal of some kind.

The uniformed man's mouth opened, and his eyes skimmed her from shoulders to hips in search of a weapon. He seemed unable to believe she was challenging him without one. "I've never seen you before. What district are you in?"

Footfalls interrupted him, many feet, running, not marching. They came from behind Annia.

The man looked over Annia's shoulder and bared his teeth. He shoved Annia out of his way and shouted to his men. "We're leaving."

The uniforms rejoined their leader in the street. In moments, they formed a phalanx and quick-marched in unison from the scene.

Annia's first thought was to sit down in the middle of the street and put her head between her knees until the faintness went away. Instead, she pulled the scanner from under her belt and approached the man on the ground.

Someone caught her shoulders. "All right?" a female voice asked. "The sons of mudrimples didn't hurt you did they?"

The new arrivals numbered at least a double handful. A big man with a CO2 tank on his back ducked into the shelter where Annia could see through the window the flicker of something burning. Two people were straightening the fence where it had been kicked over by the attackers. Another pair jogged after the retreating uniforms, and the rest bent over the man on the ground.

The tiny woman holding Annia's arm had short, black hair and a sympathetic face. "I don't know you. Are you a friend of Mr. Conrad?"

Annia disentangled herself from the woman's grasp. "I'm a doctor. Let me through."

She pushed between a young man who hardly looked old enough to grow facial hair and a stocky woman with curling hair to her shoulders. She checked first for a heartbeat and found it. The scanner's little monitor showed a good, steady jump -- fast, but that was to be expected. Blood pressure was good, so internal bleeding was a low probability. That left broken bones and bruised tissue.

"She's a doctor," the tiny woman said behind Annia, and Annia heard her whisper, "I don't know her. Do you?"

He had broken bones in the left hand, a fractured wrist, cracked kneecaps. One rib was millimeters away from puncturing his left lung. The stocky woman and a man with a s.h.i.+ny mustache were unfolding a primitive stretcher of wood and canvas.

"You can't move him," Annia said. "Some of these broken bones have to be repaired right here. I need someone to bring me the field kit from my camp."

The tiny woman with the sympathetic face squatted beside Annia with a red, plastine satchel. "We always bring our own kit. I'm Dess, by the way. Your patient is Mr. Conrad."

Their medical kit wasn't even as complete as Annia's primitive field kit. There was antiseptic spray, but no reconstructive gel and only one kind of surgical adhesive. She found a surgical probe, but no bone manipulator and a small supply of boneseal. Annia could use the probe to inject the boneseal, but the breaks would have to be realigned by hand.

The rib was most urgent. "I need two people, one on each side, and somebody else up there by his shoulder. When I say push, you're going to apply firm pressure."

They were more competent than some interns Annia had worked with. As soon as the rib was reset and sealed, Dess and her team moved the patient to the stretcher.

"We're taking him to the clinic," Dess said to Annia. There's equipment and supplies there for us, and we can leave someone with him overnight while we clean up the mess Solante's bulls made here.

"His hand still needs to be repaired, and the rest of the breaks sealed, and if I can find a brain-specific anti-inflammatory, that would guard against concussion."

The tiny woman let Annia walk beside her. The stretcher carriers went ahead. "You don't have to do this. You may not realize what you're getting into."

"I'm a doctor," Annia said. Judging by what she had seen in Murrayville so far, she doubted they had a skilled surgeon available.

"Well, Mr. Conrad needs your help, so I'm glad you were here. I didn't know there was another doctor in Murrayville."

"I haven't been here long."

Dess's eyes flicked to Annia's FS uniform, but she did not remark on it. "We're glad to have you. This is the clinic."

The poured permocrete structure was little bigger than most of the shacks and hovels Annia had seen in Murrayville.

The stocky woman opened the door to the sound of jingling bells and turned on the lights. The stretcher bearers carried their burden through a door at the end of the room. Annia glimpsed a pair of examination tables through the doorway. There was no one in attendance.

Dess saw her looking around. "The person who runs the clinic leaves the door open for us, and the kids keep an extra guard in the neighborhood to make sure n.o.body steals medical supplies. If she's not here, we make do as best we can."

The litter bearers had eased Mr. Conrad to the nearest of the examination beds. Ms. Stamos, the stocky native woman with short, curling hair, came out of a storage room with three different grades of boneseal and surgical probes of varying sizes. Annia could have used a full range of graduated bone manipulators, but the little clinic was evidently not that well equipped.