Planet Pirates Omnibus Part 25

"My lad, you should simply have gotten to know someone on the next s.h.i.+ft, so then you could move on to her bunk."

Pomayla, who was shy about personal relations, promptly got up to serve drinks.

"Were you in the FSP?" Shof asked Tee.

"Only as a contractor. I helped to develop a new star navigation's system. My specialty was computer-driven laser technology."

"Stellar, citizen," Shof said, enthusiastically. "Me, too. I built my first laser beam calculator out of spare parts when I was four." He held up his right hand. "Cauterised this index finger clean off. I've generally had bad luck with this finger. It's been regenerated twice now. But I've learned to use a laser director better since then."

"Laser director?" Tee asked. "You don't use a laser director to create the synapse links."

"I do."

"No wonder you burned off your finger, little man. Why didn't you simply recalculate the angles before trying to connect power?"

They began to argue research and technique, going immediately from lay explanation, which the other three could understand, into the most involved technical lingo. It sounded like gibberish to Lunzie and Pomayla, and probably did to Laren, who sat politely nodding and smiling whenever anyone met his eyes. Lunzie remembered that he was an economics major.

"So," asked Shof, stopping for breath, "what's the new system based on? Ion propulsion with laser memory's faulty; they've figured that out now. Gravity well drives are still science fiction. Laser technology's too delicate by itself to stand up against the new matter-antimatter drives."

"But why not?" Tee began, looking lost. "That was new when I was working for the FSP. The laser system was supposed to revolutionise s.p.a.ce travel. It should have lasted for two hundred years."

"Yeah. Went in and out of fas.h.i.+on like plaid knickers," Shot said, deprecatingly. "Doppler s.h.i.+ft, you know. Well, you've got to start somewhere."

"Somewhere?" Tee echoed, indignantly. "Our technology was the very newest, the most promising. ..."

Shof spread out his hands and said reasonably, "I'm not saying that the current system wasn't based on LT. Where have you been for the last decade, Earth?"

Tee's face, once open and animated, had closed up into tight lines. His mouth twisted, fighting back some sour retort. His involuntary pa.s.sage with cold sleep was still a sore point with him. Lunzie suddenly understood why he was reluctant to talk about his past experiences with anyone. The experiential gap between the people who experienced time at its normal pace and the cold sleepers was real and troubling to the sleepers. Tee felt caught out of time, and Shof didn't understand. "Peace!" Lunzie cried over Shof's exposition of modern intergalactic propulsion. "That's enough. I declare Hatha's peace of the watering hole. I will permit no more disputes in this place."

Shof opened his mouth to say something, but stopped. He stared at Tee, then looked to Lunzie for help. "Have I said something wrong?"

"Shof, you can behave yourself or make yourself scarce," Pomayla declared.

"What'd I do?" With a wounded expression, Shof withdrew to arrange dinner from the synthesiser. Pomayla and Laren went to the worktable, and peeled and cut up a selection of fresh vegetables to supplement the meal. Tee watched them work, looking lost.

Lunzie rose to her feet. "Now that we have a natural break in the conversation, I'll give Tee the tenth-credit tour." She twined her arm with Tee's and led him away. Once the door to Lunzie's cubicle had shut behind them, Tee let his shoulders sag. "I am sorry. But you see? It might have been a hundred years. I have been left far behind. Everything I knew, all the complicated technology I developed, is now toys for children."

"I must apologise. I tossed you into the middle of it. You seemed to be holding your own very well," Lunzie said, contritely.

Tee shook his head, precipitating a fall of black hair into his eyes. "When a child can blithely reel off what a hundred of us worked on for eight years - for which some of us lost our lives! - and refute it, with logic, I feel old and stupid." Lunzie started a hand to smooth the unsettled forelock, but stopped to let him do it himself.

"I feel the same way, you know," she said. "Young people, much younger than I am, at any rate, who understand the new medical technology to a fare-thee-well, when I have to be shown where the on-off switch is! I should have realised that I'm not alone in what I'm going through. It was most inconsiderate of me." Lunzie kneaded the muscles at the back of Tee's neck with her strong fingers. Tee seized her hand and kissed it.

"Ah, but you have the healing touch." He glanced at the console set and smiled at the hologram prism with the image of a lovely young girl beaming out at him. "Fiona?"

"Yes." Lunzie stroked the edge of the hologram with pride.

"She is not very like you in colouring, but in character, ah!"

"What? You can see the stubborn streak from there?" Lunzie said mockingly.

"It runs right here, along your back." His fingers traced her spine, and she s.h.i.+vered delightedly. "Fiona is beautiful, just as you are. May I take this?" Tee asked, turning it in his hands and admiring the clarity of the portrait. "If I can feed an image to the computers, it may stir some memory bank that has not yet responded to my queries."

Lunzie felt a wrench at giving up her only physical tie to her daughter, but had to concede the logic. "All right," she agreed reluctantly.

"I promise you, nothing will happen to it, and much good may result."

She stood on tiptoe to kiss him. "I trust you. Are you ready to rejoin the others?"

Shof had clearly been chastised in Lunzie's absence. During dinner around the worktable, he questioned Tee respectfully about the details of his research. The others joined in, and the conversation turned to several subjects. Laren proved also to be a Tri-D viewer. Lunzie and he compared their impressions of fas.h.i.+on trends, amidst hilarious laughter from the other two males. Blus.h.i.+ng red for making her opinions known, Pomayla tried to defend the fas.h.i.+on industry.

"Well, you practically support them," Shof said, wickedly, baiting her as he would a sister.

"What's wrong with garb that makes you look good?" she replied, taking up the challenge.

"If it isn't comfortable, why wear it?" Lunzie asked, reasonably, joining the fray on Shof's side.

"For the style - " Pomayla explained, desperately.

Lunzie raised an eyebrow humorously. " 'We must suffer to be beautiful'? And you call me old fas.h.i.+oned!"

"I don't know where they get the ideas for these new frocks," Laren said. After a quick glance at Pomayla, "No offense, sweetheart, but some of the fads are so weird."

"Do you really want to know?" Lunzie asked. "To stay in style for the rest of your life, never throw out any of your clothes. The latest style for next season - I saw it in the Tri-D - is the very same tunic I wore to my primary-school graduation. It probably came around once while I was in cold sleep, and here it is again. Completely new to you youngsters, and too youthful a fas.h.i.+on to be worn by anyone who can remember the last time it was in vogue."

"Can I look through your family holos?" Pomayla asked, conceding the battle with an impish gleam in her eye. "I want to see what's coming next year. I'll be seasons ahead of the whole Gang."

The remains of the meal went into the disposer, and Tee rose, stretching his arms over his head and producing a series of cracks down his spine. "Ah. That was just as I remember school food."

"Terrible, right?" Pomayla inquired, with a twinkle.

"Terrible. I hate to end the evening now, but I must go. As Lunzie said so truly, you are at the outer end of nowhere, and it will take me time to get home."

Lunzie ran for her textcubes. "I think I'll come in with you. My s.h.i.+ft at the hospital begins in just four hours. Sanitary collection units won't wait. I might as well travel while I can still see. Perhaps I'll nap at your place."

Tee swept her a bow. "I should be glad for your company." He expanded the salute to include the others. "Thank you for a pleasant evening. Good night."

Pomayla and Laren called their goodnights to him from the worn freeform couch in the far corner of the room. Shof ran to catch up with them at the door. "Hey," he called softly, as they stepped into the turbovator foyer. "Good luck finding Lunzie's daughter, huh?"

Lunzie goggled at him. "Why, you imp. You know?"

Shot gave them his elfin smile. "Sure I know. I don't tell everything I find out." He winked at Lunzie as the door slid between them. Lunzie's studies progressed well throughout the rest of the term. To their mutual satisfaction, she and the cardiology professor declared a truce. She toned down her open criticism of his bedside manner, and he overlooked what he termed her "bleeding heart," openly approving her grasp of his instruction. His personal evaluation of her at the end of term was flattering, for him, according to students who had had him before. Lunzie thought she had never seen a harsher dressing down ever committed to plas-sheet, but the grade noted below the diatribe showed that he was pleased with her.

The new term began. The Discipline course continued straight through vacation, since it was not a traditional format cla.s.s. No grade was issued to the University computer for Discipline. Either a student kept up with the art, or he dropped out. It was still eating up a large part of Lunzie's day, which was now busier than ever.

Her new courses included supervised practical experience at the University Hospital. The practic.u.m was worth twice the credits of other cla.s.ses, but the hours involved were flexible according to need, and invariably ran long. Lunzie and her fellows followed a senior resident on his rounds for the first few weeks, observing his techniques of diagnosis and treatment, and then worked under him in the hospital clinic. Lunzie liked Dr. Root, a Human man of sixty honest Standard years, whose plump pink cheeks and broad hands always looked freshly scrubbed.

Many patients who came to the clinics were of species that Lunzie had seen before only in text-books, and some of them only recently. Under the admiring gaze of his eight apprentices, Root removed from the nucleus of a five-foot protoplasmic ent.i.ty a single chromosome the size of Lunzie's finger, altered and replaced it, with deft motions suggesting he did this kind of thing every day. Even before he finished sealing the purple cell wall, the creature was quivering.

"Conscious already?" Dr. Root transmitted through the voice-synthesizer the giant cell wore around the base of a long cilium.

". . . good ... is good . . . divide now . . . good. ..."

"No, absolutely not. You may not induce mitosis until we are sure that your nucleus can successfully replicate itself."

". . . rest . . . good. . . ."

Root wrinkled his nose cheerfully at Lunzie. "Nice when a patient takes a doctor's advice, isn't it?"

Whenever Root held clinic, his students did the preliminary examinations, and, if it was within their capabilities, the treatment as well. Like Lunzie, the others were advanced year students. Most would be taking interns.h.i.+ps next year in whichever of the University-approved hospitals and medical centres through-out the FSP would take them. Lunzie's own plan was to apply to the University Hospital each term for residency, until they took her, or the search for Fiona led off-planet at last. Her advisor reminded her that she didn't need to follow the curriculum as if she was a new student. Lunzie argued that she needed as much refreshment as she could get to regain her skills. The gruelling pace of interns.h.i.+p was the quickest way to be exposed to the most facets of new medicine.

The clinic's com-unit chirped during Dr. Root's demonstration of how to treat a suppurating wound on a sh.e.l.led creature. The tortoiselike alien lay patiently on the examination table with probes hanging in the air around it and any number of tubes and scopes poked under the edge of its sh.e.l.l. With the help of a longhandled clamp and two self-motivated cautery units. Root was gently fitting a layer of new plas-skin over the freshly cleaned site, and watching his progress on a hovering Tri-D field. He handed the clamp over to one of the students. "Close up, please."

"Emergency code," Root announced mildly to the roomful of students after taking the call. "Construction workers from the s.p.a.ceport. They are airlifting them in to the roof. Some nasty wounds, a lot of blood, patients likely to be in shock. To your stations, doctors."

Lunzie and her Brachian lab partner, Rik-ik-it, fled to treatment room C, scrubbed, and helped each other put on fresh surgical gear. They had just enough time to do a check on supplies and power before they heard the screaming.

"Muhlah, what are they?"

"I can scream louder than that," Rik scoffed.

"Don't," ordered Lunzie, listening. "Shh."

The door to their treatment room slid open, and two enormous men staggered in, one supporting the other. Heavyworlders. Lunzie looked up at them in dismay.

"Help me," Rik chittered, springing forward to help the more badly wounded man to the canted table. His tremendous strength supplemented that of the other heavyworlder, and together they got the man settled on the gurney. Lunzie started to move toward him, when the other man brushed her away, and a.s.sisted Rik in laying his friend face down onto the padded surface.

It was amazing that the p.r.o.ne heavyworlder had made it to the clinic on his feet. There was a tremendous tear through the muscles on his back. One calf was split down the middle, probably sliced by the same falling object. Blood was flowing and spurting from both wounds.

"What happened?" she demanded, pus.h.i.+ng past the other two. She cut away the heavy cloth of the p.r.o.ne man's trouser leg and began cleaning the wound with sterile cleanser. By main strength, Rik tore open the slit in his tunic and began to search the wound with a microscopic device. Lunzie tossed the sc.r.a.ps of cloth to one side and put pressure on the pumping blood vessel. When the spurting stopped, she applied a quicksplint to it with an electronically directed clamp. Its edges forced together under the flexible tubeform splint, the tear would heal now by itself.

"Runway extension buckled, fell down on us," the other man said, clutching his arm. "Sarn it, I knew those struts were faulty. Trust Plasteel Corporation, the crew boss told us. Gum s.h.i.+t! The machines'll tell us if any of the extrusions won't hold up. Uh-huh."

"I can handle this one now," Rik told Lunzie.

With a comprehending nod, Lunzie turned away from the table to the other man. By the heavens, he was tall! He ground his teeth together, rasping them audibly. Lunzie knew that he was in tremendous pain.

"Sit down," she said, quickly, swallowing her nervousness. Her stomach rolled. She knew she was going to have to touch him, and she was afraid. These angry giants seemed more than human to her: larger, louder, more emphatic. They frightened her. In the depths of her soul, she still a.s.sociated heavy-worlders with the loss of Fiona, and she was surprised how much it affected her. She had to remind herself of her duty.

"It's my arm," the heavyworlder said, starting to unfasten the front closure of his tunic. Lunzie quelled her feelings and unsealed the magnetic seam running the length of his sleeve. She eased the fabric down, trying to avoid touching the swelling in the upper arm, and helped him ease the sleeve down over the injured limb. His hand, gigantic next to hers, clenched and twitched as she undid the wrist fastening, and the plas-canvas fabric flapped free against the man's ribs.

A quick glance told her that the right humerus was broken, and the shoulder was badly dislocated. "Let me give you something for the pain," Lunzie said, signalling for the hypo-arm. The servomechanism swung the multiple injector-head down to her, and the LED's on its control glowed into life. "Why not?" she demanded when the heavyworlder shook his head.

"You're not gonna knock me out. I don't trust bonecrackers. I want to see what you do."

"As you wish," Lunzie said, adjusting the setting. "How about a local? It won't make you drowsy, but it will kill the pain."

"Yeah. All right." He stuck his arm out toward her suddenly, and Lunzie jumped back, startled. The heavyworlder frowned at her, lowering his eyebrows suspiciously.

Made more nervous by his disapproving scrutiny, Lunzie stammered as she spoke to the hypo-arm control. "A-a.n.a.lyse for allergies and in-incompatibilities. Local only, right upper arm and shoulder. Implement." The head moved purposefully forward and touched the man's skin. The air gauge hissed briefly, then the unit rotated and withdrew. Lunzie felt the arm tentatively, examining the break. That bone was going to be difficult to set through the thick layers of muscle.

"Get on with it, dammit!" the man roared.

"Does something else hurt?" Lunzie asked, jerking her hands away.

"No, but the way you mince around makes me crazy. Put a rocket in it, lady!"

Stung, Lunzie paused for a moment to gather the resources of Discipline deep within her, as much for strength enough to set the arm as for mental insulation from her feelings against the heavyworlder. She would not allow herself to react in an adverse fas.h.i.+on. Her breathing slowed down until it was even and slow. She was a doctor. Many people were afraid of doctors. It was not unnatural. He was traumatised because of the accident and the pain; no need to take his behaviour personally. But Lunzie kept seeing the newsvideo of Phoenix, the bare hollow where the human camp used to be. . . .

The burst of adrenaline characteristic of Discipline raced through her system, blanketing her normal responses, shoring up her weaknesses, and strengthening her sinews far beyond their unenhanced capability. Her hands braced against the heavyworlder's bunched muscle, spread out, and grasped.

The heavyworlder screamed and flailed at her with his free hand, knocking her backwards against the wall. "Suffering burnout, let go! Dammit, get me a doctor who's gonna treat me like a human being, for Krim's sake!" he howled. He clenched his hand around the wounded shoulder, and sweat poured down his face, which was white with shock.

"Is there a problem here?" Rik-ik-it asked, peering shortsightedly down on Lunzie. His silver-pupilled eyes blinked quizzically as he helped her up.

Furiously, the heavyworlder angled his chin toward Lunzie. "This fem is a klondiking butcher. She's torn my arm apart!"

Still held in Discipline trance, Lunzie backed away. She hadn't been hurt. The man's anger held no terror for her as long as she held her feelings in check under the curtain of iron control. What had gone wrong? She reviewed her actions with the perfect recall at her command. Two quick twists, one front to back, the other, in a leftward arc. She knew, as if an ultrasonic image had been projected before her, that the shoulder was once again in place and that the broken bone had been realigned. Discipline also increased the sensitivity of her five senses.

Rik examined the arm carefully, then read the indicators on the hypo-arm. "There is nothing wrong here," he said calmly. "The doctor has set your arm correctly. It will heal well now. It is just that the anaesthetic had not yet taken effect." He glanced at the clock on the wall. "It should be starting to work right now."

"I should have checked the time factor," Lunzie chided herself later when she and Tee were alone together. "But all I could think of was fixing him up and getting him out of there. It was a stupid mistake, stupid and embarra.s.sing." She waved her hands helplessly as she paced, unable to light anywhere for long. "Rik says that I'm overreacting. He thinks that I have a phobia of heavyworlders, otherwise I would have remembered the time factor." Miserably, she programmed herself a cup of ersatz coffee from the food synthesiser. "Look. I'm reverting. Maybe I should get therapy. I was in Discipline trance; I might have torn the man's arm off." She swallowed the coffee and made a wry face.

"But you didn't," Tee said, sympathetically, guiding her to sit close to him on the wide couch in the center room of his quarters. She looked away as he clasped her hand in both of his. She couldn't stand the pity in his eyes.

"I should quit. Perhaps I can go into research, where I can keep away from any life larger than a microbe." Her mouth quivered, trying to hold up the comers of a feeble little grin, though she still stared at Tee's knees. "I never suffer fools gladly, especially when one of them is myself."

"That doesn't sound like my Lunzie. She who is taking hold with both hands in this new world. And she who persuades me not to be discouraged when small boys know more than I do about my hard-learned craft."

Her self-pity shot down, Lunzie had to smile. She met Tee's eyes for the first time. "That poor man kept shouting to me to hurry up, to fix his arm and be done with it. I knew he was scared of me because I am a doctor, but I was more scared of him! How- ever Brobdignagian in dimension, he was just another human being! My daughter's father was involved in the genetic evolution of heavyworlders. I used to get intersystem mail from Sion, long after we parted, talking about the steps he and the other researchers were taking to better adapt their subjects to the high-grav worlds. I know a lot about their technical development, and nothing about their society. It's funny that humanity is the only species making fundamental changes on itself. Catch the Ryxi altering one feather of their makeup."

"Never. It must be our curiosity: what we can do with any raw material, including ourselves," Tee suggested. "You must not blame yourself so much. It is so pointless."

Lunzie wiped the corners of her eyes with a sleeve. "It isn't. I misused my training, and I can't forget that - mustn't forget it. I'm not used to thinking of myself as a bigot. I'm a throwback. I don't belong in this century."

"Ah, but you're wrong," Tee said, removing the ignored, half-empty cup from her hand and setting it down on the hovering disk at the end of the couch. "It was an accident and you are sorry. You don't rejoice in his pain. You are a good doctor, and a good person. For who else would have been so loving and patient with me as you have been? You have much you can teach these poor ignorant people of the future." Gently, his arms stole around her, and hugged her tightly. Between soft kisses, he whispered to her. "You belong here. You belong with me."

Lunzie wrapped her arms around his ribs and rested her head on his shoulder. She closed her eyes, feeling warm and wanted. The tension of the day melted out of her neck and shoulders like a shower of petals falling from an apple tree as his tiny kisses travelled up the side of her throat, touched her ear. Tee kneaded the muscles in her lower back with his strong fingers, and she sighed with pleasure. His hands encircled her waist, swept upward, still stroking, putting aside fastenings and folds of cloth until they touched bare skin. Lunzie followed suit, admiring the line of shadows that dappled the strong muscles of his shoulders. The springy band of dark hair across his chest pleased her with its silky texture.

One of Tee's hands drifted up to touch her chin. He raised her face. His deep-set, dark eyes were solemn and caring. "Stay with me always, Lunzie. I love you. Please stay." Tilting his head forward, he brushed his lips tenderly against hers, again and again.

"I will," she murmured, easing back with him into the deep cus.h.i.+ons. "I'll stay as long as I can."