Нэнси Кресс - Terran Tomorrow

The bed on the end held Toni Steffens.

Head Nurse Amy Parker bent over Toni, who batted her away. “I’m fine. Nicole?”

“Still comatose,” Amy said. “Dr. McKay, Major Holbrook will be here in a minute.”

“Zack,” Toni said, wonderingly. And then, “I have the motherfucker of all headaches.”

Well, whatever had been going on in Toni’s brain had not changed her personality. But her broad, intelligent face looked puzzled. Holbrook strode in.

“Dr. Steffens? How do you feel?”

“Headache.”

“I’m going to examine you. Everybody out, please.”

Zack waited, fidgeting from one foot to the other, just outside the curtain, until Holbrook emerged. “Vitals are all fine,” he said. “I don’t think it’s wise to give her anything for the headache until we—”

“I can hear you, you know,” Toni said. “No, I don’t want anything for the headache. And no, I’m not a superhearer now, you’re just loud. Be quiet and let me think.”

Think? Zack pushed his way into the cubicle. Toni struggled to sit up, her nutrient IV bobbing, her puzzled expression replaced by such intense concentration that she seemed frozen all over again. Holbrook said, “It would be good for you to walk now, Dr. Steffens.”

Toni didn’t answer. Eventually she said to Zack, “Tell me what’s happened while I was comatose.”

Where to begin? “New America attacked the base with fighter jets and—”

“Not that.” Toni raised her newly thin arm and waved it, brushing aside New America, the base, and the fighter jets. “What happened in the lab. Not with the v-coma analysis—with the avian gene drive.”

“Nothing. Toni, you know that.” Had her memory been affected? “All work on the gene drive was dropped to investigate the v-coma and try to—”

“Shut up now.”

Zack held on to his temper. He and Holbrook glanced at each other, neither knowing just what they were dealing with, uncertain how to proceed. A minute passed, two. Then five very long minutes.

Toni pushed back her blankets and tugged at her IV. “Get me out of this thing. Out of here.”

“Be careful,” Holbrook said, “your muscles will have partially atrophied and—”

“Get me out and to the lab. Zack, I need your help.”

“With what?”

Toni looked at him. Her puzzlement was gone. She gazed at him with what looked like… was it pity?

Toni said, “I’ll try to explain in terms you can understand. Stop me if I go too fast.”

Jane stirred on her pallet, caught in the twilight between sleep and wakefulness, where the real and the imagined cannot be told apart because all things have become possible. She was with her lahk sisters in their house of curving karthwood; she was on Terra under a dome; she floated free in a dark space of cold, glowing stars. Creatures scampered through the walls, through her blankets, through her brain. Voices rose and fell, or were they waves on the beach at Kle^chov^ol¡? No, they were the stars themselves, rumbling before they exploded in novae of gas and speeding particles and the end of everything….

“They’re killing us,” a star said.

“And he’s letting them.”

“Nah, Josie, the old man’s all right. He stopped the attack by the Newsies and pulled off that raid on Sierra that—”

“And he let in them fucking aliens that’re killing us!”

“Nobody dead yet—”

“Might as well be—”

“For two cents, I’d—”

“Watch your mouth, Carl.”

“Quiet, you guys, my head nurse is coming…”

But no one was coming, Jane was alone except for the things scudding through her brain: leelees… no, Terran “mice”… no, something else…

Then nothing, and again she slept.

Another morning, after another long and mostly sleepless night. It might, Jason thought blearily, be an interesting experiment to see how long he could go sleepless without losing the rest of his mind. Parts of it seemed gone already. His thoughts moved slowly, through tarry mud, and in circles.

Eight days until the convoy arrived.

Court-martial.

Running out of supplies.

Toni Steffens. Belok^.

Eight days…

“Sir?” said the private on duty outside the command post. Jason hadn’t even heard the door open. “Dr. Ross asks to see you.”

“Dr. Ross?”

“Yes, sir.” The private peered at him; did Jason look that bad? Probably.

“Let her enter.”

“I’m already in,” Lindy said, pushing past the guard.

Jason said, “Dismissed.”

Lindy closed the door. There were still bruises on her face, but unless she wore some sort of brace or bandages under her clothes, she didn’t seem to be suffering from her reinflated lung. She wore her determined look. Jason straightened for the blow. “What is it? Have v-comas died?”

“No. And nobody else has revived, either.”

“Dr. Steffens?”

“I haven’t been to the lab—Claire Patel is there, examining her yet again. Or trying to, since Toni won’t stop working long enough for much examination. She’s got everybody over there doing things and she’s barking orders like General Patton.”

“Working on what?”

“I don’t know, I’m not a virologist. I’m also not there, I’m here.”

Jason snapped, “Why are you here? I didn’t send for you.” The snappiness, he dimly realized, was cover for a barrage of emotions fired by just seeing her.

“No. I’m here to examine you. Jason—Colonel, sorry—you’re showing disturbing signs of sleep deprivation. Two different people have told me so. And—”

“Who? Who told you that?”

“—as your physician—”

“You’re not. Major Holbrook is. Where—”

“With the v-comas. They’re not waking but they’re stirring. I’m it, Colonel, and I’m going to examine you. Now.” She pulled out a portalab and moved toward him.

Jason submitted. She could give him drugs to keep him going, maybe something that would last until the court-martial was over. Even at West Point, where designer pharmaceuticals had been ubiquitous to ward off sleep, to keep the body going through the physical punishment of training and the mental fog of studying while exhausted, Jason had avoided drugs. He hadn’t wanted to surrender control of his faculties, not even to something that was supposed to enhance them. He’d kept to the same puritanical policy while in combat in Congo. But this was not West Point and the combat here couldn’t be worked out in physical activity, and Jason could see the end of his strength rolling toward him as inexorable as the convoy coming up from Fort Hood.

“Dr. Ross—”

“Be quiet, I’m not done. I’m taking a quick blood sample.”

Could she see how much her nearness disturbed him? She moved close to lift one of his eyelids and he could smell her, that spicy female odor… How long had it been for him? Masturbation was not the same…. He felt his cock rise and how could that be when everything else on him was barely functional? Christ, let her not notice….

“Jason,” she said quietly, “you have to sleep. Your reflexes are off, your skin is sallow and your eyes puffy. You have way too much cortisol in your blood. Soon you’re going to have tremors, impaired concentration, and forgetfulness, if you haven’t already. I’m going to give you something that won’t put you out so completely that you can’t be roused in case of emergency, but will nonetheless let you sleep. And Major Duncan is perfectly capable of taking over for a few hours.”

“Okay,” he said, and watched her eyes widen with surprise.

“Okay? Well, good. You should take two of these at—”