Olan Thorensen - Cast Under an Alien Sun

Yozef shuddered . An amputation? What exact level of medicine did they have here? Such details had occurred to him previously, but “thinking” about and “seeing” were different. He found himself imagining needing serious medical care. Such as an amputation. Despite himself, the imagines of blades cutting through his own flesh and sawing bones rose unbidden in his mind.

“If they have to amputate, do they have something for the pain?”

“Only to dull it. The rest he’ll have to bear with God’s mercy.”

Christ! I hope to God I never have an accident here!

“Nothing at all?” choked Yozef. He was pretty sure opiates had been available much earlier than this in Earth’s history.

“There are drugs from certain flowers, but those flowers won’t grow in Caedellium and need conditions available only in a few mainland realms. The Landolinians charge very high prices for it, but even that source has been cut off since the Narthani blocked all trade between the island and the rest of Anyar. The medicants will do what they can for him. There’s nothing we can do here, except pray for him.”

The Narthani again. Blocking trade? One more reason to pay more attention to whoever these people are and what they plan for Caedellium. As for growers of the poppies—it sounds like these Landolinians run a cartel. If it was opium poppies or something similar, there are always ways grow them. Maybe some kind of greenhouses.

Yozef went back to his room. Twenty minutes later, he heard the first screams. There was no doubt who they emanated from and why, and they were audible even in his room a hundred yards from the medical building. Though he tried not to visualize the scene in the operating room, his imagination again betrayed him, as he envisioned the medicants working as quickly as they could to at least make the agony as short as possible. The screams went on for only a minute or two, then abruptly stopped. Yozef froze in place with the first scream and now found himself soaked in cold sweat. More minutes of quiet passed before he could do more than sit on the side of his bed.

The next day, Yozef stopped the medicant Brother Willer as they left the dining hall.

“Brother Willer, how is the injured man we brought in last night?”

The brother shook his head. “I’m afraid the medicants and our prayers weren’t enough. He died while they were taking the leg. Brother Bolwyn said his heart gave out. That’s always the danger when someone is older. A younger person might have survived the operation.” With that, Willer patted Yozef on the arm and walked away.

Yozef stood frozen in place. The plain but hearty meal lay a lump in his stomach. He walked outside into the cooling morning air and leaned his forehead against the cold stone wall to help keep from ejecting the meal.

It was another lesson to him not to forget where he was and to assume nothing . He’d taken for granted Harlie’s statement he’d never be sick again. Sickness didn’t cover accidents. What if he got injured? Whatever painkillers they had here were scarce or unavailable.

And did they understand about germs? On Earth, asepsis wasn’t accepted until around 1860–1870. Harlie had said he’d be immune, but was Harlie right? Or even telling the truth?

Later that night he lay in his bed. Thinking, unfortunately. Thoughts kept returning to unpleasant images. After he’d spent nearly an hour of staring at the dark ceiling, a different thread pushed itself to the front of his consciousness. There was no serious anesthetic. If he could get some of the plants or seeds of the poppy, he could figure out how to grow them in greenhouses. But that was well into the future, if possible at all. He assumed the Landolinians were serious about maintaining a monopoly.

What chemicals could be used? Ether, nitrous oxide, chloroform? Yozef’s heart beat faster. He clenched a fist and pounded into the other palm .

“You know . . . ,” he mumbled to himself, “I should be able to make all three, given materials and some help.”

The next day, instead of joining Carnigan for assigned tasks, Yozef went out to his log, stared through the overhead leaves, and thought serious chemistry for the first time since his arrival.

Of the three chemicals he remembered, nitrous oxide wouldn’t work. Production required ammonium nitrate, which had to be synthesized by reacting nitric acid and ammonia, a pretty volatile and dangerous step itself. Then the ammonium nitrate had to be purified and crystallized, then heated to decompose into nitrous oxide and water vapor. Other side products of the reaction had to be removed through various filtering and purifications, which required yet other chemicals likely not available.

The same for chloroform: he needed chlorine gas, which involved electrolysis of a sodium chloride solution, capturing the gasses and purifying the chlorine gas, which was then used to make calcium hypochlorite—bleach.

“Where the hell’s Walmart when you needed one?”

He further remembered you then had to react the bleach with methane (CH 4) to get a mixture of the four possible chlorinated compounds (CH 3Cl, CH 2Cl 2, CHCl 3, and CCl 4). Chloroform was the third product, the one with three chlorines attached to the carbon. It could be separated by distillation from the others, but Yozef didn’t want to get involved with the fourth product—carbon tetrachloride, which he remembered was dangerous, something about liver failure and cancer. The latter might not be a problem for him , assuming what Harlie had said about the nanomachines they’d injected into him was true, but what about his workers?

“Nope. Chloroform’s out, too.”

That left ether. Or, more precisely, diethyl ether. As with the other two chemicals, to his surprise, when he thought about the synthesis of ether he found himself envisioning whole pages of chemistry texts describing ether synthesis and purification.

That’s odd I can recall entire pages so clearly. Why couldn’t I do this when I took courses ?

He could see it was a simple reaction of ethanol with sulfuric acid. Heated, but not too much. The reaction at 140 oC, with alcohol being continuously added to keep it in excess to prevent the reverse reaction of ether back to ethanol. Not that it was all that easy. Nasty stuff, if you weren’t careful , he reminded himself. Above 160 oC, ether could spontaneously ignite, and even in storage at lower temperatures ignition could occur, due to high vapor pressure.

Yozef could see the page of warnings as if it were right in front of him. The heating would be a bitch. Ether was extremely flammable. Then there was storage—airtight containers in the dark, in small quantities for safety, and add a piece of iron in the bottle to slow peroxide formation, which also had the nasty habit of exploding.

He continued thinking as he paced his room that evening and as he walked the grounds the next two days, trying to remember what he could of ether synthesis and crafting how he would broach the subject with the abbot. He had to be very careful. New ideas might be seen as threats to the existing order and attributed to demonic influences or heresy. He knew of consequences that even minor innovations could cause, especially among conservative religious and medical professions. His interview with the abbot had touched on the issue, but he hadn’t yet acted on the abbot’s advice to come to him first with new knowledge to introduce.

He’d been telling myself he needed to consider all of the ramifications of introducing new knowledge and take action at some point, but knowing himself, he’d likely procrastinate. If the accident at the pub didn’t prod him to jump on the potential of anesthetics as an ideal place to start introducing new technology, then when and what would be?