The medical problem. Whatever had been done to her, whatever might be undone. She wanted to argue her own case, demand the risks of the top specialists, explain who might have done this, and why. But that would have to wait until she could talk—if she ever could.
Cecelia surprised herself by falling asleep in the shuttle. Real sleep, deep comfortable sleep. She felt safe, with Brun’s hand on her cheek, safer than she had felt in months.
When she woke, the voices overhead sounded medical again, and for a moment she panicked. But the medicinal smells interwove with more pleasant ones, and Brun’s voice made up part of the conversation.
“—better strip the programming on those sphincters.” A woman’s voice; she sounded as if she were scowling. “We’ll want to keep her hydrated, but we don’t want any distension.”
“But let’s check the drug port—they may have an implanted delivery system, and there might still be residuals.”
“Just remember that she can hear you,” Brun said, from a little distance. “Talk to her, not just about her.” Then, taking her own advice, she spoke to Cecelia. “You’re on the yacht now; I think you went to sleep for a while, though it’s hard to tell. You’ve got Dr. Czerda and Dr. Illik with you, right now.”
“I’m Czerda,” the woman’s voice said. “I’m a geriatric neurologist, with special interest in pharmacological insults. I’m checking the ports on your chest: cardiac monitor, venous access, feeding tube. There’s a . . . yes . . . a set of three miniature pumps in the venous access. I’m going to have to take these out very carefully . . .” Cecelia could just feel a faint tug, disconcerting but not painful. “Brun—if you’ll take these over to the bench there—”
“Can you tell what the drugs are?” Brun asked.
“Probably. At least we can tell the class, and if it’s referenced we can identify it precisely. If not . . . it may take a while. What the drugs do is my specialty, but identifying them isn’t. We can get it done, though. Now . . . I’m going to leave the rest of this in; we’ll want the cardiac monitor and the venous access, although I hope we can get her—you, sorry—off the feeding tube and back on oral.”
“I’ve got the signals on the implants,” the man’s voice said. “Standard Zynnis model fives, and we have the manuals.” His voice came toward Cecelia’s head. “Brun says you’re hearing us; I know that’s possible. I’m Dr. Illik; you met me at Sirialis when young Ronnie was in the hospital there. I was the tall skinny bald one.” Cecelia remembered a pleasant, homely face and jug ears. “We’re going to give you the same kind of care that you had, except that we’ll be triggering your bladder implant more often. Right now you need that again; it’s been over twelve hours.” He sounded embarrassed; Cecelia had long given up embarrassment. It wasn’t her fault someone else had to operate her once-private functions. She could tell when they changed her body position, although she wasn’t sure how much, and she could hear the result when the implant opened. It did feel better, although she’d hardly known what the vague discomfort was.
“We’re not going to mess with your cranial access right now,” Czerda said. “There’s a small chance they put in a lockout circuit that could hurt you if we didn’t key in correctly. I want a full readout of everything else first, and we’re going to try to get your cranial implant to talk to our monitors. So far it’s not. But I would like to see if you can swallow. We did that ultrasound when you first came aboard, and I don’t think they bothered to do an esophageal pinch.”
Cecelia had no idea what an esophageal pinch was, but assumed it had something to do with whether or not she could eat. The thought of actually tasting food again thrilled her. Her mouth filled with saliva. Surely she had to be able to swallow, or she’d have choked before now.
“Now . . . what I’m going to put at your lips is a soft plastic nipple, on a water bottle. When you feel it, try to suck.”
She felt nothing, then a dull bump as something hit a tooth. She tried to suck, but wasn’t sure she remembered how. She had not had anything in her mouth in a long time.
“Serious loss of sensation,” Czerda said. “Let’s see . . .”
A cool wetness tasting faintly of lemon filled her mouth. Cecelia swallowed without thinking; her tongue felt ungainly and misshapen, but she didn’t choke.
“Very good,” Czerda said. “That time I squeezed some out; I’d like you to do it this time.”
Cecelia struggled with a recalcitrant tongue and cheek muscles that no longer worked willingly. A tiny drip rewarded her, then a trickle.
“That’s too much,” Illik said. “Look at the cardiac monitor—she’s straining.”
“But it’s something.” Czerda sounded angry. “Even a tiny, weak suck, and we know she’s still got that. Let’s see about something else—”
This time it was cold, and sweet, and smooth . . . a chilled custard, perhaps. The flavor developed in Cecelia’s mouth, from the initial sweetness to a rich, fruity taste . . . and she was able to swallow the spoonful, savoring the feel of it all the way down her throat. Date-caramel custard, with a touch of almond essence, she thought.
“Oh, very good,” Czerda said. “Brun, do you happen to know what foods she liked best?”
“She had one of the best cooks anywhere,” Brun said. “She liked good food, all kinds.” Not all kinds, Cecelia thought. Prustocean cuisine is ghastly, and there’s no way anyone can cook Abrolc cephalopods so they don’t taste like oily rubber. Surely Brun could remember her favorite spices, at least.
“Great. If she can eat custards now, she’ll be able to eat solids very soon. I’m glad I insisted on including a dietician in the primary team.” Dietician! Cecelia wanted to glare. Dieticians thought more of nutrition than flavor; she imagined herself with a mouthful of pureed halobeets, unmitigated by spices. “We’ll leave the feeding tube access in, just in case, but the sooner she’s on an oral diet, the sooner we can get her an oral communication system.”
“You mean talking?”
“No, not at first.” Cecelia hoped she was wrong about the undertone that suggested Maybe never. “Her inability to talk could be all neuromuscular—loss of control of voluntary muscles of speech—or it could also involve central language problems. I suspect the latter. But if she can swallow, that means she can control her tongue and breath—and that means she can learn to suck and blow, and that means she can use a mechanical system to signal. Yes and no, at least, and probably a lot more.”
“But if she can swallow, then why can’t she move her jaw?”
“Good question. It could be a local paralysis, either from an injection into the nerve, or maintained by the drugs we found in that packet. Or, in a woman her age, it could be simple arthritis of the temporomandibular joint. If they kept her jaw immobilized for long enough, muscle atrophy and arthritis together could produce what seemed to be paralysis. At any rate, until she has control of her jaw, she can’t chew. We can open and close it—and we will—but that’s not really chewing.”
Cecelia knew exactly whom she’d bite if she had the chance, these long-winded idiots who blathered on as if she weren’t there.
Lorenza grimaced when the light flashed on her deskcomp. Someone wanted her badly enough to override the recorded message explaining that she wasn’t available. She hated being interrupted after dinner. It had better be a real emergency. She picked up an impressive-looking pile of documents before flicking the screen on. That way whoever it was would know she had been interrupted in the midst of real work.
On the screen, Berenice’s distorted face looked much older, as if her rejuv were failing all at once, and her words at first made no sense. “She’s gone! She’s gone!”
“Who?” A maid, a cook, even a pregnant cow, thought Lorenza idly. Why did people think she was a mind reader?