James Gardner - Space Inc (collection)

“Tell me about them; I’m awake.” I suck on coffee, to ensure I can live up to the promise. I could ask the genie for the hand-over, since all the information is databased, but nobody comes up here to be a hermit.

“The first one’s Maria Jose Elliott, twenty-seven, closed-suit crush injury to right leg. Vascular repair was successful with recovery of good perfusion; some ischemic damage and rhabdomyolysis. No genetic risk factors for muscle breakdown, however, slightly increased risk of thrombosis. The gene-genii flagged two separate polymorphisms associated with mild thrombophilia.

“Second one is Li Shu Quen, thirty-four, decompression injury to left arm, sustained when she went to assist the first casualty. Transferred primarily for pain management; she’s a known hypo-responder to synthetic opioids and Franklin didn’t have the drugs to cover her.” I agree with his scowl; if they have a known hypo-responder, they should have the drugs to cover her.

“I thought Artemis’ argument for all-female work crews was that they had a better record in hazardous work environments?”

Out of the corner of my eye I see the nearest genie’s eye brighten. “Genii, cancel review request,” I get in, before the knowledge system starts to pontificate on the world literature on gender differences in safety practices. “When are they going to give us an upgrade that can recognize a rhetorical question?”

Y’ can recognize a rhetorical question. “Stephe Te Kawana has a hot gallbladder over at Sharman. The auditor-genii says she doesn’t have acceptable live experience, and so she wants to know whether she should transfer or whether you’ll operate from here.”

“How’d someone get up here with a hot gallbladder? They should have been screened out and treated Earthside.” Y’ produces another from his repertoire of shrugs. “What should I know about him?”

“Forty-eight-year-old male, Ellis Keene. Engineer with Faber. No known health problems.”

“I’ll review him, see whether we should transfer him here. What’s the lag between Sharman and here?”

“Seventy-one milliseconds,” supplies the genie, on cue.

Telesurgery is limited by, among other things, the signal round trip. Humans can only accommodate two, two fifty milliseconds delay between their movement within the operating station and the visual feedback from the OR suite. Much more than that, and the rhythm is broken, instruments get out of position, incisions are too shallow or too deep, sutures are ill-placed.

Then Y’ adds the joker to the pack. “We heard an hour ago that there is an IBDD shuttle due in at 2307 for Semmelweis.”

Another platter of dainties left over from the bioterrors. HIV-’flu, for instance, or Jerusalem hemorrhagic fever.

Although the last proven biowarfare release was seventeen years ago, and decommissioning of the former biowarfare labs is slowly proceeding worldwide, nobody quite wants to let go. Hence Semmelweis, another example of a small, not so bad idea that grew into a monster. We can see it from here, off to the right, a clutch of polyhedral pods, tube-linked, with solar collector deployed.

Unlike any other department of the IMS, there are no tubes linking it to the rest of the platform, only support struts. Semmelweis is entirely self-contained, shuttle and bubble-car being the only way to reach it. Initially, it was intended to be a temporary research and storage facility; now, because the IMS is the organization that all bodies and states distrust least, it has become the repository for all the ostensibly decommissioned pathogens… just in case.

“Genii, please confirm that all departments have been officially notified that ambulances are exempt from the standard security lockdown?” Two years ago a critical transfer was delayed by security, such that we nearly lost the patient. I might forgive and forget; space doesn’t.

Roll on the happy day when Semmelweis gets floated off on its own. Roll on the happier day when Semmelweis gets dropped into the sun.

“What else?”

What else is our current cadre of trauma inpatients, tucked away in the flare-shielded infirmary pods toward the center of the platform. Given the screening our crews undergo, they’re as near to perfect specimens as the human race produces: young or middle-aged adults selected for excellent health, low cancer risk, mental stability, intelligence, adaptability, and a variety of other assets.

Not that we are underemployed, since the five IMS platforms are effectively the tertiary care centers for the orbital population, the fifteen thousand or so inhabitants of everything from the great solar taps to long-term experiments in closed-environment living, with various materials manufacturing, materials research, and pharmaceutical research and manufacturing platforms in between. Trauma accounts for most of the surgical caseload. Platform construction crews are disproportionately represented, because of the number of new and short-term workers, then platform maintenance, particularly the outdoor monkeys, those whose work involves EVA. Inboard and teleconstruction crews are less likely to wind up in here, though we currently have two survivors from an explosive depressurization that killed one over on McAuliffe. One might be discharged back to McAuliffe today, assuming traffic control can clear the backlog created by the IBDD shuttle in time. The other is likely to be transferred Earthside if the anti-PTSD pharmacotherapy doesn’t take effect soon.

“G’ night,” I said to Ygevney, who waves an idle hand at me and monkeys toward the nearest hatch. I tuck myself into one of the lounge’s blebs—recessed communications alcoves—to look in the genii’s eye. I’m considered eccentric for my appetite for Earth news, but my family, like myself, incline toward dangerous places. My plant geneticist parents are currently working in the Christian States of America, whose attitude to gene-engineering is nothing if not ambivalent, even though climate change has so altered the Prairie and Southern landscape that no unengineered crop plants can survive. My marine-biologist sister, the radical conservationist, is campaigning against the expansion of the fish plantations in former New Zealand waters. Since a third of the world’s population is now dependent on the sea for food, the campaign has been, and will continue to be, violent. My peacekeeper brother is guarding a forensics team investigating accusations of bioagent release somewhere in Mid-Europe. And my ex-marital partners, a mobile group practice, have just been granted license to practice in a region of United Africa formerly closed to, and still very suspicious of, Western medicine.

I don’t want to be taken by surprise by the official message that begins with the words “We regret to inform you…” though I know I probably will be.

None of my spiders snag anything of interest, except for an item on the case before the World Court determming plat-formers’ rights to rear children in microgravity. A verdict is pending.

Pregnancy is both achievable and sustainable in a platform habitat, though there are challenges involving oxygenation and circulation. Study of mammals in microgravity suggests that the postnatal maturation of skeleton, muscle, and circulation under gravity is likely to be abnormal. Perhaps abnormal enough that any child raised purely or mostly in space would have serious difficulty readapting to Earth.

As far as those on the international and commercial platforms are concerned, the issue is academic. Our contracts stipulate contraceptive implants, and our benefits include gene-banking and IYF. But several platforms established by smaller governments, private foundations, and organizations explicitly promote procreation in space. Four infants have been born in the freehabs over the past three years, and the Earthside relatives of two have taken the argument over their well-being to court. The freehabber parents are refusing to take the children Earthside at all until their rights are upheld.