“I thought it was a good idea to bring along Carlos, so he could explain,” Ted broke in smoothly. “He didn’t rat on you.”
Nigel shrugged.
“I don’t blame Carlos for this at all,” Ted said with heavy seriousness. “He’s been under pressure, as we all know. I do blame you, though.” He tapped Nigel’s chest. “You’re going in for a full check. Now.”
Nigel shrugged again. “Fair enough.” He glanced at Nikka and saw she was thinking the same: With his blood newly filtered, he might pass.
Carlos said, “I’m sorry, but it had to …”
Nigel felt a surge of sympathy for the man. He patted Carlos tentatively on the shoulder. “Never mind. Forget all this old stuff, from before you went to the Slots.” He wanted to suggest that it would be best to make a whole new life, forgetting himself and Nikka, but he saw that would be the wrong note to sound so soon.
He was naked, so Ted saw nothing unusual about his retiring to pull on some clothes, in the bathroom he drank a solution of antioxidants and other control agents, to mask the clear signature effects of the blood processing. When he returned Carlos was out of his mood and was explaining to Nikka that he had successfully applied for a job on the ground team on Pocks.
“Grunt work, sure, but it’ll get me down on a planet again.” He shifted heavily, still unused to the feel of the bulk of muscle, but eager to use it. Nikka seemed pleased. Nigel marveled at how she covered her anxiety so well. If they treated this all very matter-of-factly, and the tests weren’t too probing, they might just bring it off.
“Come on,” he said mildly, “I’ve got work to do. Bring on your needles.”
Ted walked with him to the medical center. There was going to be a shipwide meeting later that day, over the net. Ted was distracted. He grudgingly gave up the information that the latest transmission from Earth was full of news. The gravitational telescope had surveyed two more planetary systems. Each had a terrestrial-type world, and around each a Watcher orbited. That brought the count to nineteen terrestrial-type worlds discovered, fourteen with Watchers, out of thirty-seven star systems.
“Life turns up everywhere, I guess,” Ted said. “But it commits suicide just as fast.”
“Ummmm.”
“They’ve got their hands full back there, with the ocean thing. Everything happens at once. They’re not processing the planetary data fast, ’cause this Swarmer stuff is—”
“What stuff?”
“I’ll announce it today. They’re coming ashore. Killing people, somehow.”
Nigel nodded, silent.
They put him into a kind of fuzzy sleepstate for the tests. He ignored them and focused on Ted’s news. It was important to understand this event, there was a clue buried somewhere. But the sleep dragged him down.
Seven
When he woke up he was dead.
Utter blackness, total silence. Nothing.
No smells. There should be the clean, efficient scent of a medical center.
No background rustle of steps. No drone of air conditioning, no distant murmur of conversations, no jangle of a telephone.
He could not feel any press of his own weight. No cold table or starched sheets rubbed his skin.
They had disconnected all his external nerves.
He felt a rush of fear. Loss of senses. To do that required finding the major nerves as they wound up through the spine. Then a medical tech had to splice them out of the tangled knot at the back of the neck. Delicate work.
They were preparing him for the Sleepslots. Shutting him down this far meant he was going into semipermanent storage. Which meant he had failed the medmon exam, and badly.
But they never slotted you without telling you. Even critically ill people got to say good-bye, finish up details, prepare themselves if at all possible.
Which meant Ted had lied. The smooth casual manner, bringing Carlos along to deflect Nigel’s attention onto the other man—yes, that was his style. Avoid confrontation, then act decisively. With Walmsley’s Rule disproved, his medical deception uncovered … a good time to swat Nigel’s gadfly, bothersome buzzing.
The medmon had probably turned up some incriminating information, but that was certainly not enough to slot him without warning. No, it had to be a pretext— one he could contest only years later, Earthside.
He fought the rising confusion in his mind. He had to explore this, think.
Was he fully dead? He waited, letting his fear wash away.
Concentrate. Think of quietness, stillness …
Yes. There.
He felt a weak, regular thump that might be his heart.
Behind that, as though far away, came a slow, faint fluttering of lungs.
That was all. The body’s internal nerves were thinly spread, he knew. They gave only vague, blunt senses. But there was enough to tell him that the basic functions were still plodding on.
There was a dim pressure that might be his bladder. He could pick up nothing specific from legs or arms.
He tried to move his head. Nothing. No feedback.
Open an eye? Only blackness.
Legs—he tried both, hoping that only the sensations were gone. He might be able to detect a leg moving by the change in pressure somewhere in his body.
No response. But if he could sense his bladder, he should have gotten something back from the shifting weight of a leg.
That meant his lower motor control was shut off.
Panic rose in him. It was a cold, brittle sensation. Normally this strong an emotion would bring deeper breathing, a heavier heartbeat, flexing muscles, a tingling urgency. He felt none of that. There was only a swirl of conflicting thoughts, a jittery forking in his mind like summer lightning. This was what it was like to be an analytical thing, a machine, a moving matrix of calculation, without chemical or glandular ties.
They weren’t finished, or else he’d never have come awake again. Some technician had screwed up. Shut off a nerve center somewhere, using pinpoint interrupters, perhaps pinching one filament too many.
They worked at the big junction between brain and spinal cord, down at the base of the skull. It was like a big cable back there, and the techs found their way by feedback analysis. It was easy to get the microscopic nerve fibers mixed up. If the tech was working fast, looking forward to coffee break, he could reactivate the conscious cerebral functions and not notice it on the scope until later.
He had to do something.
The strange, cold panic seized him again. Adrenaline, left over from some earlier, deep physiological response? He was afraid now, but there was no answering chemical symphony of the body. His gland subsystems were shut down.
There was no way to tell how rapidly time passed. He counted heartbeats, but his pulse rate depended on so many factors—
Okay, then—how long did he have? He knew it took hours to shut down a nervous system, damp the lymphatic zones, leach the blood of residues. Hours. And the technicians would leave a lot of the job on automatic.
He noticed a faint background sensation of chill. It seemed to spread as he paid attention to it, filling his body, bringing a pleasant, mild quiet … a drifting … a slow slide toward sleep …
Deep within him, something said no.
He willed himself to think in the blackness and the creeping cold. The technicians always left a pathway to the outside, so if something went wrong the patient could signal. It was a precaution to take care of situations like this.
Eyebrows? He tried them, felt nothing.
Mouth? The same.
He made himself think of the steps necessary to form a word. Constrict the throat. Force air out at a faster rate. Move the tongue and lips.