APRIL 14, 2040
RACHEL
Just as the meal was ending, moments after Yahvi had slipped out, Rachel began to feel dizzy and nauseated. It reminded her of morning sickness—and the sudden possibility that she might be pregnant added a whole new layer of stress to the moment. She and Pav were still making love—though, for a variety of good reasons, not since leaving Keanu. They weren’t using birth control, either, since everyone wanted the HB population to expand . . . but not right this minute!
Then she realized it was Keanu calling.
She glanced at Pav, who showed no sign that he was being contacted. So she excused herself and went out into the hallway.
Where the connection proved to be almost useless. She managed to learn that Sasha was calling, and heard mention of Dale Scott and a “warning.”
She managed to respond with a confirmation and a status update—which was status quo, Sanjay still critical and not seen.
Then it was gone, a most unsatisfying few moments.
Before she could return to the conference room, Taj joined her. “It turns out, the Aggregates did try to kill you,” he said.
Rachel smiled bitterly. “You mean, our tail section didn’t just fall off?”
Taj looked unhappy, whether with Rachel’s flippant response or the fact that his news wasn’t really news. “No, you were the target of a submarine-launched missile.”
“Well, we assumed we might be shot at. It was one of the reasons we came here rather than the U.S.”
“Didn’t you consider equipping yourself with defensive missiles?”
Was this the “danger” Sasha had just tried to warn her about? “Taj, we were lucky to get Adventure flying, period. We just didn’t have the time to invent and install an anti-missile system. Besides, we were just as likely to have been hit by a laser. Or conventional weapons.”
“I understand.” He got a curious smile on his face. “During the Keanu landings—I don’t know if you knew or remember this—your father’s team thought we had put a missile on Brahma.” He shook his head at the memory.
Rachel had indeed heard that: At the time of the Destiny and Brahma missions there had been tension between the United States and India in particular, so much that some NASA people believed that Brahma’s crew would do anything to beat Destiny to the Keanu landing—even shoot at them.
“Have you told Pav about the attack?”
“Yes.” A simple answer, but it annoyed her. She was the leader of the crew, yet Taj persisted in giving key information to Pav! Because he was his son? Or because he was male?
Maybe it was the fact that she hadn’t really enjoyed the meal, that Yahvi was worrying her, or that the poor communication session with Keanu reminded her of the burdens of being female, Rachel decided she’d had enough.
“Fine,” she snapped. “Since you two are talking, tell him that I’m going to see Sanjay, then Zeds.”
“But Kaushal—”
She was walking away before Taj could finish reminding her that Wing Commander Kaushal didn’t want her “bothering” the doctors or patient.
There must have been something in her manner—Rachel knew that in certain situations she had a lean-forward, purposeful stride that tended to enhance her power—but the moment she arrived at the ICU and announced that she was here to see Sanjay Bhat, Wing Commander Kaushal emerged from around a corner. He closed a cell phone and said, “Give me one moment to summon the surgeon.”
He walked away, leaving Rachel wondering what had changed his mind about allowing her access to Sanjay. She also wondered whom he had been talking to. And, while she waited, where was Pav?
Kaushal returned with not one but three doctors, all of them in white lab coats. “They will tell you everything they can,” Kaushal said. The five of them slipped into the team conference room.
No introductions were offered and, frankly, Rachel didn’t care. Her eye immediately went to the X-rays on the light board.
The obvious senior doctor, a tall, stooped Hindi with glasses and wavy gray hair, spoke. “The patient was unconscious upon arrival. Our initial diagnosis showed that his left frontal cranium had been struck by a heavy object.
“Fortunately, the object was largely flat—”
“Except for a few protruding switches,” the second doctor said. He was much younger and seemed to Rachel to be impatient.
“The flat surface resulted in a blunt-force injury that was spread over a considerable area. It was as if he had fallen onto a floor or street from a height of perhaps two meters.
“There was some lateralization; his left pupil was blown. The bones were fractured across the entire area.”
“Would I be right,” Rachel said, “in thinking that the front and left part of his head got mashed in?”
“Crudely.” The doctor seemed testy; obviously he was not used to interruptions. “But, yes, the skull was deformed. There was considerable brain swelling, which we alleviated by drilling these holes.” His pointer glided across three tiny dark spots.
“After twenty-four hours, the swelling has subsided, though the patient’s head still shows a great degree of trauma—“
Just listening to the cold, grim precision of the diagnosis made Rachel want to weep. Given what she had seen in the cockpit, she had suspected that Sanjay’s injury would be severe, but here was proof.
The senior surgeon continued, but Rachel could no longer understand his words. She finally blurted, “I want to see him.”
They took her around the corner to a hospital room, and there lay poor Sanjay, the left half of his head covered in thick bandages, the usual monitors recording a steady but slow heartbeat.
Rachel reached for his hand. To her dismay, it was cold and limp, like that of a corpse. Sanjay had been part of Jaidev’s group, spending his days constantly busy improving life in the habitat. Did he have a lover? He was old enough to have memories of Earth . . . were there family members or friends he wanted to see here? She remembered a brother—then cursed herself for her lack of knowledge. Some leader she was turning out to be! She finally asked, “What is the prognosis?”
“All we can say is that he’s stable.”
Stable! What a horrible state!
Rachel let go of Sanjay’s hand and walked out.
As a leader, as a wife, and especially as a mother, Rachel had developed several operating rules.
Rule number one: Face the bad news because it doesn’t get better with time.
She had accomplished that with the visit to Sanjay.
Now it was time to deal with Zeds. Focusing on the challenges of making the Sentry happy, or finding a way to give him useful work, kept her from wondering where Pav had gone and why he was leaving this to her. There was no one she could ask—as she slipped down the stairs from the second-floor ICU to the ground floor and its high-altitude chamber, she passed no one at all.
Once she was on the ground floor, she saw only a couple of medical people, and a single guard outside Zeds’s chamber. No Taj, no Tea, no Yahvi or Xavier.
Rachel almost regretted walking away from Kaushal and the surgeons so abruptly.
Of course, she could have diverted to the conference room to retrace her steps and find her missing husband and family members. But that would have forced her to ignore rule number one.
Sure enough, Zeds was chafing at the confinement. “We discussed this, did we not?” she said. She was working through Zeds’s mechanical translator, usually a smooth process, aided by the fact that Rachel knew some Sentry Sign, and Zeds had a lifetime of vocalized English and Hindi.
“Mental preparation is no substitute for the experience.”