Элизабет Бир - Machine

“Do they eat you for traffic tickets here?”

I have never eaten a sentient, Cheeirilaq said. And only once or twice contemplated it. Your amino acids probably wouldn’t agree with me anyway.

They would be fine, but this seemed like a bad time to point that out.

Carlos looked at me. “Joking,” I mouthed.

He sighed. “You are very large,” he said to Cheeirilaq. “But not too different from some Earth species that were part of my ship’s biosphere.” Carlos held up his fingers about eight centimeters apart. “Is it offensive if I say we carried them for pest control?”

As long as you recognize that I am a great deal smarter, I will not be offended. Cheeirilaq’s head rose, its thorax inclining toward the vertical. Its face swiveled toward me. I assume I am a great deal smarter?

“Infinitely,” I agreed.

Excellent. After a fashion, I also specialize in pest control.

I walked back to my quarters, contemplating a nap. It had been a long dia, and it wasn’t getting any shorter. My exo didn’t let me trudge, but it was definitely doing 90 percent of the work of motivating me along the corridor.

I should have been planning my data requests regarding the “safety incidents.” But I kept thinking about what Rhym and Hhayazh had told me. I was a Core General staff physician. I could just… go and see what was going on back there in the private ox ward.

Couldn’t I?

My fox was all-access. I wouldn’t even need a suit. And there was direct access to the private unit from the Casualty Department, so I wouldn’t have to worry about the still nonfunctional lifts, or suiting up beyond decontamination protocols.

I had every right to be there. And nevertheless, I felt a chill as I contemplated it.

My species is very good at picking up unconscious cues and aversions, being highly social animals. We are excellent at reading the room and knowing what is expected of us and whether we have overstepped somehow.

And yet I didn’t want to go back there. For no reason at all.

So I found myself wondering, given the intensity of my desire to avoid finding out what was back there—or even speculating on it—if some small aversion (a don’t-see-me, a denial bug, a Somebody Else’s Problem field) hadn’t been added to the hospital staff fox updates at some point.

Sally, I asked inside the privacy of my own senso, what do you know about the private units?

She hesitated.

Sally?

Know from personal experience? Nothing. Additionally, I am unaware of any public details regarding the functioning of these units.

What do you speculate, then? Or what have you discerned?

As you know, she answered, everyone in the Synarche is guaranteed a high minimum standard of care. Everyone is entitled to be as healthy as possible, given the limits of technology.

I would have tapped my fingers on my exo, but I was much too sore for extraneous movement.

Up to and including transplants and regeneration therapies.

“Clones,” I said. “We don’t grow them with anything more than autonomic brain functions, because that would be unethical.”

So all patients receive the highest standard of care. Anything else would, likewise, be unethical.

I slid through the door to my quarters. It had hardly closed behind me before I stripped down to my exo, wiped myself off with a lemon swab that didn’t smell a thing like real citrus oil, and tipped myself into my bunk before my gear had even stowed itself. My limbs ached. My feet felt heavy and overlarge.

My exo needed a charge. I hooked it to the trickle and tried to get comfortable.

“Right,” I said. “I certainly try to provide that. And I know that you do, too. So… what’s in first class? What are they getting that we’re not?”

Now that we were in private, Sally spoke out loud. “Concierge service. Their pillows fluffed. Chocolates thereon. Expensive resources: human labor, surface foods.”

“Huh,” I said. “Did the unit AI tell you that?”

“There is no unit AI.”

“There what ?” I sat up so fast I almost dropped myself out of the hammock.

“There is no unit AI.”

A sour feeling settled inside me. “That can’t be right.”

“Nevertheless,” said Sally. “It is true.”

It was a terrible reason to break into a medical unit. Well, all right, it wasn’t technically breaking in. But as much as I was a full-time doctor now, I’d been a doctor and a cop before. One does not become either of those things due to a congenital lack of curiosity.

I was tired and in pain. I tuned myself for wakefulness and pain relief, knowing that it would cost me later in backlash. But later was not now. I climbed back out of my hammock and dressed in fresh scrubs. I even combed styler through my hair and programmed my overworked frizz to a nice, tight, professional cap of curls.

My exo’s charge light was still blinking. It could process a certain amount of electricity from my motions, but that wasn’t the same as a nice fat eight-hour trickle. Still, I should be good for another standard, if I didn’t try anything too strenuous.

Even if I ran out of juice, it wouldn’t be as if I couldn’t move at all. It would, however, hurt much more, and involve a lot of groaning and hobbling.

Piece of cake.

It wasn’t far to Casualty. I suited up in the hall, for the anonymity it offered—and the biohazard protection. Just in case there was something unsavory going on back there that was also contagious, rather than merely the exploitation of resources by the rich.

Imagine what it must have been like hundreds of ans ago—back in Carlos’s dia—when there was no Guarantee, no Income, no useful work for anyone who wanted it. No promise of safety and health and security. Only exploitation under various systems all claiming to be different, but all amounting to the farming of the many to make wealthy the few. Serfdoms and indenturehood and chattel slavery.

Explaining the future to him was going to be interesting.

The Casualty Department was positively eerie in its emptiness. I hadn’t been back to Sally recently, and I hadn’t expected the complete lack of patients and the nearly complete lack of staff. One lone Ceeharen triage nurse waved to me from behind the desk across the big reception deck without raising their head. They appeared to be bent over a reader or game board of some sort.

I waved back and kept walking, angling far enough from the desk to preclude casual conversation, and headed toward the entrance to the private unit.

My footsteps echoed through the eerie emptiness. I braced myself for whatever bullshit I might be about to witness, and keyed myself in through the door.

Battery levels critical, my exo said. Fatigue levels excessive. Recommend recharge and sleep cycle as soon as possible.

I know, robot. I know.

My exo quit about ten steps after I crossed the threshold. I couldn’t see the telltale on my wrist through the suit, but I knew it would be blinking orange.

“Exo, are you there?”

The only thing breaking the silence inside my suit was the soft echo of my own voice inside the helmet. The senso link in the lower quadrant of my visual field blinked EXO 0% BAT, just to add insult to injury. Orange, when moments before it had been yellow and at 7 percent.

One thing primitive humans did have going for them was a lack of stuff that runs on batteries. And, more to the point, runs out of batteries.

I realized I had stopped in a doorway and, pushing against my exo, hastily stepped through. Decompression shields are designed like guillotines.