Festina gave him a look. "How often does it happen?"
"Not often but sometimes."
"This goddamned navy," Tobit muttered. He and Festina looked deeply suspicious, but said nothing. No one in the Outward Fleet was immune to machines going off kilter — not doctors, not Explorers, not admirals — so you had to give Veresian some benefit of the doubt. Tobit watched the doctor play with the control panel, while Festina glowered at no one in particular. Finally, she glanced at me and said, "You’re feeling all right?"
"I’m fine."
She gave a half smile. "You look fine." Then she turned away from my bare chest to watch Veresian tinker with his equipment.
Five minutes later, the doctor finished recalibrating, realigning, reprogramming, reinitiating.
Five minutes after that, Veresian swallowed, and said, "There you are, same results as last time. This patient is definitely not human."
25
GETTING DIAGNOSED
For a split second, I felt like dashing out of the room. I didn’t; but I opened my mouth, intending to babble something, I don’t know what, some cowardly nonsense about it being Dad’s fault. Not a word came out — the spirit that sometimes possessed me had taken over, keeping me stone quiet.
"What do you mean, not human?" Tobit demanded. He gave me a quick glance, as if he could verify my race just by looking.
"Every tissue in Explorer York’s body has components not found in Homo sapiens. Hormones. Enzymes. Protein compounds I can’t even classify."
"Do they match other species?" Festina asked. "Balrogs maybe?"
I shuddered at that — both me and whatever was possessing my body. It would be very bad if the Balrog had planted a spore on me, and little Balrog brigades were already romping through my bloodstream.
"Not Balrogs," Veresian said after checking his screen. We all breathed a sigh of relief. "But it’s hard to narrow it down much farther than that." He pointed to something on the readout. "This lipid, for example… it’s not found in humans, but it’s reasonably common in alien species. Matches twenty-three sentient races that we know of and billions of lesser creatures from the same worlds."
"Are Mandasars on the list?" I asked calmly. (Not me — the spirit in control of my mouth.)
"Why yes, yes they are," Veresian answered, scanning down his data.
"If you check the other alien compounds," continued the thing inside me, "I think you’ll see they’re all found in Mandasars."
"Hmm. Yes. Yes."
"You think it’s the hive-queen venom?" Tobit asked.
"No," I said. "When I was on Troyen, I came down with something they called Coughing Jaundice. Supposedly one of their local microbes. It hung on for a full year — nearly killed me dozens of times. A group of Mandasar doctors improvised a number of treatments… including tissue transplants, and filling me up with nano that would prevent the transplants from being rejected."
Veresian’s eyes widened. "They transplanted alien tissue into a human? Without killing you? And the transplant can actually survive on human blood nutrients?’
I wasn’t sure what-all treatments I’d got, but I figured the spirit could be telling the truth. Over that horrible year, there were so many operations and injections and "Just lie in this machine for a while, Edward," I must have had every medical procedure you could imagine. Of course, I didn’t say that to the doctor. I didn’t say anything. The spirit in my mouth said, "You know Mandasars. Put enough gentles on a problem, and they come up with brilliant solutions." The doctor looked at me as if he didn’t quite believe it… but he should have. Before the war, Troyen had developed the most advanced medical knowledge of any race known to humanity. It was the Mandasars’ big area of expertise: they didn’t build starships or robots or nanotech, they just specialized in doctoring. Any species, anytime. Which meant they’d invented practically everything in this sick bay, even if Veresian didn’t know it. He was too young — Troyen had been out of the picture for twenty years, way longer than this scrawny stethoscoped kid had been practicing medicine.
"If they did that to you," Veresian said, "why isn’t there anything on your chart?" He pointed to his vidscreen… which I couldn’t see because doctors always sit you down at an angle so you can’t look over their shoulders. Heaven forbid a patient ever gets to see his own information.
"I guess the records didn’t get transferred properly," the thing controlling my mouth replied. "When the war started, we were all so disorganized… important documentation might have got lost."
"But if you had this jaundice a full year," Veresian said, "there was plenty of time to file a report. The moment any member of the navy contracts an alien disease, it’s mandatory to notify the Admiralty. Direct to HQ, no exceptions."
"Yes," Festina added, "there are League issues involved."
I knew that: the League expected our navy to keep a sharp eye on threats to human life. The High Council couldn’t let such things slip between the cracks, or the whole fleet would be accused of willful negligence toward each other’s safety.
"Sorry," I said, "I wasn’t in any shape to submit a report… and I don’t know why the others didn’t. A breakdown in communications, I guess — everybody in the diplomatic mission must have thought someone else would do it."
That’s what the spirit possessing me said. But in my heart I knew it was no accidental slip-up. Sam was in charge of the mission, and in charge of me. Filing the report was her job, and apparently, she hadn’t done it. Why? Because she didn’t want official navy doctors getting involved, checking me out, discovering my tailored DNA? Or…
Something flickered in my brain, then disappeared.
The doctor spent another hour puzzling over my anatomy, but didn’t make much progress. As far as he could tell, the two doses of venom hadn’t caused any obvious damage; but since he didn’t know what my normal chemical balance should be, he couldn’t say if my body had gone haywire or if I was flat on the bubble.
"You’re almost three percent Mandasar now," he said in a voice full of wonder, "and frankly, frankly, I couldn’t begin to make a prognosis. The venom wasn’t as alien to you as it would be for a normal human. That could mean your body has a better chance of shrugging the poison off… but it could also mean the poison will have more long-term effects because your body is responsive to it. The purpose of venom is to change Mandasar metabolisms. Three percent of you could be mutating like crazy, and I wouldn’t know the difference."
That wasn’t so very comforting.
Veresian told me to come back the next day to see if anything had changed. I said all right, but was already going over excuses for getting out of it. (By then, it was me doing my own talking again — the spirit possessing me must have got bored and taken off.)
The doctor also asked if I’d submit to a complete physiological study for scientific purposes. I was an astounding case and should be written up in some journal. For that, he’d need my permission to go public… and I refused point-blank. If he did a full examination, he’d surely learn stuff about my genes that I’d rather keep secret.
Finally, the doctor demanded Kaisho come down and certify me as sentient: I wasn’t human, I wasn’t Mandasar, and considering what happened to Willow, Veresian refused to take chances. Tobit grumbled, "Aww, Doc, York’s a sweetheart," but Festina said it couldn’t hurt to get me double-checked.
"You don’t mind, do you, Edward?" she asked. "Better safe than sorry."