Several times, she saw their heads dart in to touch the bottom of a leaf. Were they feeding, she wondered, picking up insects or spores or maybe some extrudate from the plant? Her lenses were not quite good enough to tell her that, but the Captain's tri-dees could be developed at very high magnification and should be able to give them the answer, to that question and to a number of others besides.
For over an hour, the two green lizards clambered and fluttered from leaf to leaf. At last, both scrambled to the ground and scurried away from the stand of plants. Within moments, the thick growth had completely screened them from the off-worlders' sight.
The Medic gave a long, lingering sigh. "They were so wonderful," she said softly.
Jellico looked at her, as he had more than once during the past hour. She had been completely absorbed in watching the little creatures, more so even than he had been himself, and she had been happy in her absorption. Happy and unguarded. He realized this was the first time he had seen her shields go down for any significant length of time.
Her eyes were bright when they turned to him, but it was no longer possible to read with any certainty what lay behind them.
"How do you think we did?" she asked.
He slid his camera back into its case. "If a small part of these come out, we'll have exceeded our goal by a stellar margin. — Thank you, Rael Cofort."
"My pleasure," she replied, happy in herself and for him, "though I can't rightly say that I did much. I didn't feel anything in particular happening."
"I'd say it's likely that you helped," he said dryly, "considering that no one has ever before been able to study those little creatures in action since the day they were first discovered."
The woman frowned. "Miceal, how're you going to explain what we did? We don't really understand it ourselves."
"I'm not going to attempt an explanation," he responded rather stiffly. "I'll probably forget to mention the telepathy theory altogether."
"You can't do that!" she told him sharply. "You're too much a scientist."
"No," he agreed slowly. "I couldn't. I'm only going to touch on it in passing, though, toss it in as a possibility, and suggest we may have succeeded because we were full of hope, not anticipation or excitement that might come across as hunting instinct. I can't say more since we don't know what actually happened or if anything did happen at all. — I imagine you're not eager to wind up as part of an esper research project?"
"Space, no! I'd hitch a ride on Sanford Jones's glowing comet first." She shuddered. "Apart from the likelihood of running into trouble about the mystery surrounding my mother's antecedents, I know too much medically. There isn't any such thing as esper training and won't be for another few decades—or centuries if the funding dries up.
All they do now is take folks apart for weeks and sometimes years at a stretch, and they don't always remember to put them back together again."
"That's more or less the way I had it figured," he said.
"We can't publish what we tried. If the wrong people read about it and got interested, I wouldn't be able to protect you and neither would Teague. Esper research is a government project, and if they really wanted you for it, they'd get you."
"They won't hear anything from me," she promised fervently. Rael gave him a sidelong glance. "You're an awful worrier, aren't you?" she remarked. "You can find the gloomy side of anything."
Jellico laughed softly. "That's a prerequisite for my job.
A starship Captain lacking that trait doesn't usually last long enough to acquire it. Unfortunately, his ship and everyone else aboard normally go out along with him."
His fingers drummed on the controls. He glanced at her as determination firmed in him. "Rael, I'd like some answers. None of this will go beyond me, and I know I'm out of my lane, but ... "
She sighed. "I'd like to be able to do more with animals.
It seems that might actually be possible, and I'll work at it, but right now, I have to stand by what I said before. I don't know what happened here or if anything happened. I certainly can't supply an explanation."
"I'm not challenging that."
"What are you challenging?"
"Nothing. I just want to put a few questions to rest." The gray eyes gripped hers. "What happened to you in the Red Garnet?"
Her breath caught, and she started to frown, but she stopped herself. Ali and the others were this man's shipmates and subordinates. They would have described the whole incident in detail for him even if they had kept quiet about that part of it in front of the Patrol-Colonel. "I panicked."
"Aye. Why?"
2
Her eyes wavered. "I felt. . . something in there. What,
I don't know, though believe that I've tried to figure it out. Maybe it was the rats' collective hunger, maybe some afterglow of the victims' horror and pain. Maybe it was something filthier, the eagerness of the subbiotics who could run an operation like that. They probably saw every stranger who walked into their lair as potential prey." She shuddered. "It was all over the place, choking and draining me.
I— I had to get out of there!"
She regained command of herself. "I figured, too, as much as I could reason, that the others'd follow if I ran. Of course, a fight almost erupted instead . . ."
Her lips tightened into a hard line. "I've got no excuse.
I blew it badly, and you'd have been within your rights to boot me off the ship."
"None of my lads asked for that," he responded quietly.
Her eyes, which had been fixed on her clasped hands,
lifted. "Would . . . would you have done it?"
"No. I'd have upheld your contract. Your term of service is almost out, and you're not going back into space with us."
She just nodded. Jellico watched her for a moment. If he was ever going to hear the rest, it would have to be now, while she was thoroughly demoralized. "How can you function as a Medic?" he asked bluntly. Her answer to that could break her story, and it could give him some of the insight into her that he ever more strongly wanted to have.
"I don't have a problem with that," the woman responded without hesitation.
Her brows came together as she sought words to convey her meaning. "I'm definitely not what is usually thought of as an empath. I don't experience another's pain or emotions, but I do feel—uneasy when someone nearby is ill or injured. It is not a pleasant feeling. It's horrible, in point of fact, but it's not debilitating."
For a moment, anger drove back her pallor. "That's how I found the poor apprentice on the Mermaid. I knew something was wrong and hunted until I discovered him.
If I hadn't, he'd probably have died where he lay. Slate certainly wouldn't have bothered looking for him even if he were missed in time. The bastard never even came to see him when he was dying." Her voice cracked. "Oh damn . . ." she muttered as she was forced to fall silent.
Miceal's fingers brushed hers. "It's all right to care, you know," he told her gently. "Space, you're a Medic. You're supposed to care."
Cofort withdrew her hand. "The effect isn't cumulative," she went on, her tone steady and impersonal once more. "I was afraid it might prove so when I started my emergency room rotation, but I had no difficulty. I was able to set the discomfort aside the same as if I were dealing with a single patient and get on with my work."
"Your gift has no real effect, then?" he asked thoughtfully.
"It might in a sense. I proved remarkably able at triage, and I could single out the most serious cases present, the heart attacks as opposed to the bad sprains."
"What about during the plague?"
She shook her head. "I wasn't conscious of anything particular then except for the constant fear and grief, but I was only a child, and we were all scared. I may have been picking something up, and I suppose I might have developed some inborn ability for handling the pressure, but I can't recall anything of the sort. I know the rest, such as it is, developed as I grew. It was a major factor in my choosing medicine as my specialty."