Stephen Leigh - Changeling

It didn’t look good. Being alive was threatening to be more uncomfortable than being dead. “Mandelbrot?” Derec’s voice was a hoarse croak. There was no answer.

“Mandelbrot?”

Still nothing. It looked as if he was going to have to get out by himself. He didn’t like the idea, not one bit. Derec moved to unbuckle his crash webbing. It was a mistake.

He screamed and promptly blacked out again.

It had stopped raining and the grass fire was out when he came back to consciousness again.

“Reality, part two,” he muttered to himself. There was still a throbbing ache in his left arm; his right seemed to be functioning, if badly bruised. He forced himself to look-yes, the left forearm was definitely fractured, the skin puffy and discolored, the arm canted at a slight and very wrong angle. The sight made him nauseous. Great. All you need is to be sick all over yourself. What if you ’ ve got broken ribs or internal injuries… …

Derec leaned his head back and took several deep breaths until his stomach settled again. Reaching over with his good hand, he tightened the left harness of the webbing until his shoulder was tight against the seat. Then he grasped his left arm at the wrist, took a deep breath, and held it.

And let it out again with a shout. He pulled, hard.

Bone grated against bone.

When Derec came to consciousness for the third time, he checked the arm. It was bruising nicely, but it looked straight now. He could wiggle his fingers, make a weak fist. The pain made him want to whimper, but there was nothing he could do about it for the moment.

“Okay,” he breathed. “You got to get out, find the first aid kit, get the painkillers and the quick-knit pills,” he told himself. “You can do it.” Using his right hand, he unbuckled himself-squirming for the right-hand buckle at his shoulder, the pain stabbed at his chest: broken ribs, too, if nothing worse. He was starting to sweat, coldly, and the periphery of his vision was getting dark.

Shock. Take it easy. Just breathe for a few seconds.

Gingerly, Derec tried his legs. His left ankle had been wrenched badly, but he thought he might be able to put weight on it, and his right thigh was bloody under the torn pants, but everything worked.

Fine. Let ’ s see if we can stand.

He pushed himself up with his one good arm, cradling the other. The movement coupled with the throbbing head made the ship swirl about him. For a moment, the world threatened to go away again. Derec fought to remain conscious. No, he pleaded. The last thing you want to do is fall. You might not make it up again.

After a minute, the landscape stopped its ponderous waltz around him, and he could stand. The cabin was a total loss. The flooring was buckled, gaping holes had been torn in the bulkheads, and everything was sitting at a slight downhill angle. Derec noticed Mandelbrot immediately. The pilot’s seat had been sheared off during impact and lay on its side at the “bottom” of the cabin slope. Mandelbrot was still in the seat, his body dented, dinged, and scratched.

“Mandelbrot?” Derec called again, but there was still no answer. First things first, he told himself. Where ’ s that kit?

It should have been on the near wall; it wasn’t. After a stumbling search through the nearby rubble, Derec finally located the white-and-red box. He fumbled open the catch and tore open a vial of EndPain. He stabbed the injector into his thigh with a hiss of the air jet; the medication felt cool, and he could feel it spreading. The pain began to fade, the headache to ease. After a few minutes, he was feeling vaguely human again.

He found the quick-knit tabs, read the instructions, and swallowed two. With the pain temporarily subdued, he rigged a splint from a piece of plastic and the cloth covering of one of the seats. The arm felt better secured and placed in a sling. He knotted it with his teeth.

Derec was beginning to feel alive once more. Alive enough to know that he was still in deep trouble on a world he didn’t know and maybe half a continent or more away from the Robot City and help. He could still hear the central computer via his chemfet link, but the damned thing still didn’t respond to him as had the original-it would have been easy to order a squad of robots to find and rescue them.

And if pigs had wings… .

Derec had to have Mandelbrot. Without the robot, this was going to be very, very touchy. The quick-knit tabs would heal his arm in a week or two - if hedidn’t refracture it rummaging through the wreckage; if there were no internal injuries that crippled him first; if there was nothing on this planet that decided he looked tasty…

If he was still alive in a week.

Derec made his slow way over the broken hull to the robot. The seat had pinned Mandelbrot to the wall. Derec braced his back against the cabin wall opposite the robot, planted his feet on the seat supports, and shoved: the seat groaned, moved, and dropped back again. Derec gritted his teeth, pushed once more. This time the seat tumbled over, Mandelbrot dangling loosely from the straps. Derec waited until his breath returned and then opened up the robot’s chest cavity.

There were too many things that could have gone wrong with the robot that couldn’t possibly be fixed here. Derec could imagine every last one of them in his mind.

It didn’t look as bad as it might have. The trunk line from the main power source had pulled loose, though backup power to the brain was still intact: good, that meant there would be no memory loss. There was some structural damage, though Mandelbrot’s Avery-type arm looked perfectly fine. The optical circuits had taken quite a jarring; Derec wouldn’t be surprised if there were some problems there when he powered up the robot.

And it was going to be no fun working with one hand. “Only one way to find out…” he muttered, then shook his head. Who in space are you talking to?

It took an hour to find the toolbox; another to one-handedly splice the bad power cable and jury-rig the socket-he had to stop halfway through to hit the painkillers again; the headache was back and his ribs made every breath an agony. The soldering tip trembled in his hand as he made the last connections. He wiped sweat from his eyes and straightened. He closed the chest compartment and touched the power contact.

A status light blinked amber. One eye gleamed fitfully; the entire body shuddered. The head swiveled with a distressing squeal of grinding metal, and Mandelbrot looked in Derec’s general direction.

“Master Derec?”

“Mandelbrot.”

“You are very fuzzy in my optical circuits. It would appear that the landing was not all we had hoped for.”

“It would appear so.” Derec shrugged. “How are you?”

“Checking…” Mandelbrot’s voice trailed off; the eye dimmed. After several seconds it brightened once more. “Systems check program running. Main positronic circuitry intact; two sectors damaged but recovered and backed up. Right optical circuits not functioning; left out of adjustment. Neck sleeve joint misaligned. Main trunk connections damaged but acceptable. Main and auxiliary power circuits acceptable. Three servo motors have cracked casings and will be a problem if the lubricant seals are breached and leaking. Knee servo in left leg burned out and knee locked.” The robot’s fingers clenched and opened. “Other minor damage. Would you prefer the full details?”

“Save it for later.”

“Then I must ask how you are, Master Derec.” Mandelbrot rose to his feet, the left leg extended stiffly. “I note that your arm is splinted and there is blood on your clothing. You grimace when you move, as if your chest hurts you.”