And then one night, I woke up gasping. My throat was raw.
And dry. I wanted water. I managed to holler-and my lungs screamed in agony! That was a mistake. I wanted to die, just to end the pain.
Somebody was saying something to me. "It's all right, Lieutenant. Just relax. See if you can relax." I tried to focus on the voice. All I saw was a blur. The room was too dim.
"Don't talk," he said. He held me up gently, cradling me and feeding me soup in small delicious doses. "Just eat. I'll talk." It was the nurse with the very clean face.
"Mmmf," I said, splurting soup.
He wiped my mouth with a napkin. "You're at Oakland General. It's Monday evening and you've already missed tonight's episode of Derby. Too bad. It was a good one. Grant is still looking for the missing robot, but now he knows it's still in the plant. Carrie found out about the last DV-sale-T. J. told her, of course-and now she's demanding a stockholders' meeting. Everything depends on Stephanie, but she refuses to leave Hong Kong, and nobody knows why. Ready for more?"
"Mmfl."
"Good. Open wide. So, compared to that, your problems are nothing, right?"
I didn't answer. My lungs hurt too much. Besides, Grant should have known from the beginning that T. J. couldn't risk having that robot's memory dumped.
"All right, one more slurp and we're done. There you go. Dr. Fletcher will be in to have a look at you in a little bit."
Dr. Fletcher was wearing gloves and a mask. All I could see were her eyes. They looked tired.
The first thing she said to me was, "Don't talk. You run the risk of destroying your vocal cords." She sat down on the edge of the bed and looked into my eyes, my ears, my nose. She studied the medi-console on her lap. Then, she looked at me and said, "Congratulations."
"Mm?"
"You'll live. We didn't expect you to. The tissues of your lungs were so swollen, there was no room for air. We had you on lung support for three days. You're one of the lucky ones. There were more than two thousand others who didn't make it-because we didn't have the machines for them."
I wanted to ask-but she put a finger across my mouth before I could speak.
"I said, don't talk." She hesitated, then added, "You had one of the worst cases of dust poisoning in the state, Lieutenant. We should have pulled the plug on you-we needed the bed space-but your commanding officer wouldn't allow it. She said you owed her a lobster dinner, and you weren't going to get out of your obligations that easy.
"Besides, we needed to discover something, and you helped us do it. We now know that dust poisoning is reversible in even the worst cases. If we can save you, then we can save anybody. We're already preparing for next year."
"Umf," I said. I held up a hand to stop her from going.
"You're going to be all right," she said. "Don't worry. The worst is over."
I grabbed her arm. "Mmf?"
"Colonel Tirelli is all right too."
"Dmk!"
"And Duke. He's in intensive care and his condition is stabilized. We're watching him closely. You did a good job on him, Lieutenant. You can be proud."
"MpP"
"I'm going to put you back to sleep now," she said. "And then I'm going to put you back on maintenance. It'll be easier for you." She touched a button on the medi-console.
And I went out again.
THIRTY-ONE
THE NEXT time Dr. Fletcher came in, I was more coherent. She picked up the console and studied it. Did all hospital personnel do that automatically?
"How am I?" I asked.
"You're fine," she said. "And I can say that with authority, because I am your personal physician. Only the president and movie stars get better treatment."
She sat down on the edge of the bed and put her hand on mine. "The truth is, all medical personnel in the science section were moved over to help with the emergency. But, even if that weren't the case, you'd still be under my care. You are not so much a medical case as a scientific one."
"Because I had the worst exposure to the dust?"
"You were one of the first," she said. "So if any weird effects were going to show up, we'd expect to see them in you first."
"And ... ?"
"And I am disappointed to tell you that the dust is about as benign as a Chtorran life-form can be. The death toll is expected to remain below three thousand."
"Disappointed?"
"Mm hm. I was hoping you'd be an interesting case. Too bad. I guess I'm just going to have to go back to my worms."
"Worms? Plural?"
"Uh huh. We've got two more live ones." "Dr. Fletcher?"
"Yes?"
"Have you ever put any of them together?"
"They're in the same tank, why?"
"Do they -I don't know how to phrase this-do they roll around together like they're making love?"
She looked surprised. "How do you know about that? We've only had them together for a few days. The whole thing is still very secret."
"You haven't seen the videos we brought-?"
She raised an eyebrow at me. "In all my spare time? In case you hadn't noticed-"
"Right. Sorry. Well, we saw the wrestling behavior when the blimp arrived. The worms got frantic. At first I thought they were attacking each other, but they weren't. They came back. They looked ... confused-but I wouldn't even begin to guess what was going on."
"Mm," she said. She looked like she was considering something.
"I want to see your worms," I said.
She nodded. "I want to see your videos. As soon as you're ambulatory again, okay? I'll set it up." She stood up to go. "There's a wheelchair in the closet if you want to get out of bed. Please ask a nurse to assist you. Don't be proud."
"Thanks. What room is Colonel Tirelli in?"
"She checked out three days ago. But Captain Anderson is upstairs and you can visit him any time." She remembered something. "Oh-you have messages, quite a stack of them. Please read the priority ones first. And I think your mother wants to visit you. Handle that, all right?" And then she was out the door.
After a while, I buzzed for assistance and got myself bathed, shaved and transferred to a wheelchair. I found my way up to the twelfth floor without too much trouble.
Duke was still in an oxygen tent.
He looked dreadful. He looked like the guest of honor at a Texas barbecue. I couldn't look and I couldn't look away. His face was swollen. His eyes were blistered shut. His skin was blackened and peeling. His arms looked wet and putrefying. And he smelled bad.
I almost fled in horror. Human beings should not look like this.
Human beings should not smell like this. But I didn't know how to put the wheelchair in reverse, and the little voice in my head was already bawling me out for being a coward. I steeled myself and stayed.
I rolled around to the foot of his bed and picked up the mediconsole.
Duke was on maintenance. He was beyond consciousness. For that I was grateful. There was not a lot to say. And I wasn't sure I could talk to him yet. Not with him looking like something out of a horror show. This wasn't Duke. I couldn't rectify this monstrous piece of meat with the man I had spent so much time with.
I didn't see how he could ever be human again. He might live. But his life was over. I don't know how I knew. I just knew it. My mind brought up memories. Duke had taught me almost everything I knew about how to be a military man. He'd made it very simple, he'd boiled it down to two words.
Be certain.
"Here's how to know if you're certain," he'd said. "Can I rip your arm off if you're wrong? If you can't give me an unqualified yes, then you're still not certain.
"That thing that you ignore-that thing that you let yourself be unaware of, or unconscious of, or uncertain about-that's the thing that's going to kill you. So your job, whatever it looks like, is really this: you have to know everything about everything that you have to deal with.