He felt Joseph's hand take his and extended his will to respond.
Joseph felt the merest quiver in Amos's fingers, but he knew it was deliberate, that the Benisur was conscious and would, indeed, recover.
"My Lord," he said in a voice harsh with relief.
Soamosa had wakened to the sound of tears. A soft, strained, high-pitched whining, followed by a series of sobs. A sound of heart-breaking loss and confusion.
She blinked her eyes free of sleep and turned to Captain Sung, wondering if this time he would accept the comfort she offered him. I think Karak may have been a little rough with that catheter, she thought uncomfortably. Just the idea of a catheter made her squirm. She was certain she had installed her own incorrectly. Resolutely she turned her mind from that path.
There is nothing to be done about it now except to think of something else. It is not as though I lacked distraction, she thought wryly.
That was when she noticed that Captain Sung was quite still, his eyes closed, his face calm. He was snoring gently, she realized.
Then what is it that I hear?
Slowly, her eyes widened with horror and the hair on the back of her neck rose in a ripple that made her shudder. That awful weeping, the sound of a lost and wounded child, was coming from Karak.
Slowly she turned, her heart thudding like a horse's hooves and her mouth dry. He is having a nightmare, she thought desperately. My poor love. But instinctively she knew that the sound she was hearing never came from a sleeping man.
He was leaning over his console, the helmet almost resting on the boards before him. Then he flung himself back in his couch and flailed his head from side to side as if trying to fling off his helmet.
His face was gray and slicked with sweat. When his eyes opened it was like looking through two golden hued windows into the heart of a furnace. As she watched, tears spilled over and rolled heavily down his cheeks.
Karak touched gloved hands to his head, to be stopped by the face-plate. He groaned and threw his head forward again.
"Karak!" Soamosa freed herself from her couch and pulled herself rapidly over to him. "Speak to me, Karak. My love, can you hear me?" She placed her trembling hands on either side of his helmet and gently lifted his head. "Karak, you must answer me. Can you hear me?"
She was terrified. He could be dying and there was nothing she could do to help him. Locked into their suits hike this she couldn't even touch him.
He opened his eyes and after a long moment, he seemed to recognize her. He smiled and moved a hand, as though to caress her, then stopped, as though the effort, even in zero-g, was too great.
"My sweet," Soamosa pleaded desperately, "if you can hear me you must give me some sign. Can you speak?"
He looked puzzled for a moment, then shook his head.
"Are you in pain?"
He nodded and his face crumpled like a child's, great fat tears falling unchecked down his sweat-slick face.
"Take a sip of water," she advised him.
He looked at her blankly through the plastic that separated them. Then he looked around, as though expecting a glass to materialize from nowhere. When it didn't, he looked accusingly at her and licked his lips; thirsty now that she had mentioned water.
"Sip on that," she said, pointing at a small flexible tube near his mouth.
He complied and his eyes widened with pleasure when the water came in response to his sucking.
Soamosa smiled reassuringly at him and then turned to the array of tell-tales built into the front of his suit.
Each suit of space-armor had a very basic auto-doc built in, to offer pain-killers and antibiotics, to apply pressure in order to control bleeding, and to administer up to two pints of plasma. Soamosa directed the suit to administer pain-killers. She noted that his fever was one hundred and four and reduced the interior temperature of his suit, hoping to combat the heat in his blood.
"Sweetheart," she pleaded, "why is this happening? Kolnari are never sick. Their bodies are too strong, they fight off everything. Why is this happening to you?"
He smiled bravely at her through his tears and mouthed the words: "I fight." Then his eyes crossed and rolled back in his head and he lay quiet beneath her.
She had panicked then, rushing back to her seat and activating the com, putting out a frantic Mayday call, hoping desperately that it would not be the Kolnari who answered it.
"Answering Mayday," a voice said in her ears. "This is free merchanter Wyal. Report your position and status."
Wyal, she thought. That is… that is Joat's ship. Every child on Bethel knew about the Jack Of All Trades and what she'd done against the Kolnari on SSS-900-C-girls especially knew. She is the abomination's daughter.
That thought brought her up short, like a mild slap to the face. She had thought, "abomination's daughter," without the slightest bit of rancor. It was merely an identifying tag, like the security director's wife… or the Benisur's Lady. She blushed to remember how she had yearned for that title.
Well, she thought wryly, I suppose that if I have been impetuous enough to fall in love with a Kolnari, I have no business tossing epithets about. Nor aspiring to be the Benisur's wife, for that matter.
"I am aboard a Kolnari three-crew fighter craft," she said, her voice a little hoarse. "With me are Captain Sung of the Benisur Amos's ship Sunwise. And… ah, and a Kolnari. Captain Sung and the Kolnari are ill, very ill-some sort of tailored disease which affects the memory functions. Help us, please!"
The waiting was almost harder than the fear had been. Captain Sung slept on, for which she was grateful. She considered authorizing the suit to give him a sleeping dose, but fought the urge. It would be selfish of her, and might harm him. Who knew how this awful disease had marred the functioning of his brain?
Releasing herself from her couch, she once again floated over to Karak. His eyes were closed and his temperature remained high, but at least had risen no higher.
"Oh, be well, my dear one," she whispered fervently. "I could not bear it if you became like the Captain." Her breath caught on a sob.
For that must be what afflicted him. And his body, in typical Kolnar fashion, was just different enough to cause this violent battle for supremacy over the disease that had broken the Captain's mind. She prayed that his body would be different enough to win.
An eternity later, the Wyal slid out of the night.
"Stand by for force-docking." A distant part of her was surprised that a merchanter was equipped for that… but this was Joat's ship, after all. The smaller vessel shuddered violently as the freighter's lock clamped on to it.
A small explosion of air, part sob, part laugh, entirely relieved, escaped Soamosa's lips.
She heard someone thumping awkwardly through the narrow tube connecting their ships when a thought struck her.
"Wait!" she cried frantically, just as she heard someone's gloves clack against the lock-face.
"What is it?" Rand asked.
The thumper had either heard or been warned to stop, for suddenly there was no sound back there.
"I should have thought of this," Soamosa apologized raggedly. "There is sickness aboard our craft. A very dangerous illness; we dare not expose you to it." She could feel the blood drain from her face as she spoke.