Fiction...Page 3

I should have jumped right to the task. Instead, I fought down a wave of nausea while telling myself it was always wise to get the big picture first. Oh boy, did this one belong in the MOUA gallery-right alongside E-Botticelli and O-Brandt (my fave since he, too, was from Ophiuchi-8). Despite the astonishing array of scratches, gouges, and bruises, her broken body retained the seductive curves of a V-Modriani vestal virgin, albeit one whose epithelium happened to be smooth and ebony. A mass of glorious green-blue tresses formed an iridescent aura surrounding her head. Golden eyes, fogged with pain, were heavily lashed under curly navy brows. Poor thing. Observable injuries: broken tibia, cracked ribs, dislocated shoulder, nasty head wound, sprained wri-

Uh-oh. There were five of them, which was two more than I'd been expecting. Long, slender, fingers designed for delicate procedures-like the one I was about to begin.

I stepped back and stood there, scratching what should have been my head, only the damn OpsHelmet was in the way. If the five would just do the right thing and morph into three, I'd be outta there and on my way back to my sleepbay for some sorely needed shut-eye. I'd had one too many at last night's drug fest, and the double vision still lingered. Or maybe some jokester down in the Storage Unit had sprayed my helmet with VisionFog. Probably both.

Grabbing an EZ-wipe, I ran it over the front of my helmet, shook my head (which triggered another wave of nausea), and looked down at the body lying on the ops-pad. Damn. Still five digits. Hands and feet. Easy to hide feet, though. Not so simple for hands.

I turned and tapped my partner on the shoulder. "Got a sec, E-Dav?"

"Nope," came the filtered reply. "I stop now, and this one's a goner. That must've been some docking screw-up for their injuries to be this bad."

"Well you know what they say about Nebulans and deep space maneuvers."

"According to Admitting, they got clobbered by a meteor."

I peeked over E-Dav's shoulder and saw that his patient had the three-digit hands and feet that signified Nebulan in much the same way that five-digit appendages did for Milkies like us.

"Deportation ship," he said, signaling for a nurse. "The poor anomalies might recover, but they're never going home."

So that's what-or whom-I was dealing with. And didn't I just catch my patient closing one eye? Since Nebulans' eyes were their hearing organs, that meant she'd probably been eavesdropping.

Prying open the Nebulan's eyelid, I said, "Can you hear me?"

The patient raised her hand and stuck a thumb upward.

"Did you hear what I just said to the other doctor?"

The thumb jerked downward. A likely story.

"Where does it hurt?" I inquired, ever mindful of my medical duty.

The hand patted her stomach.

"Okay," I said. "The scans will be back soon, and we'll get you fixed up in no time."

The body shrank into itself, the hands slipped beneath the buttocks, and a hissing whisper emerged from what we Milkies have always assumed was the Nebulans' speaking organ. "No cutting."

"Of course not," I laughed, in my most jovial bedside manner. "What, you think we're still back in the Nanotech Age?"

Both ears wriggled, the Nebulan equivalent of raised eyebrows.

"Look, we don't do surgery anymore," I explained. "Not even the nano type." In fact, what we did was something most sentient beings weren't told about-something that I hoped I'd never have to undergo myself because just thinking about it gave me the willies, and I'm a trained medic.

In most injuries involving internal bleeding or trauma, we introduced tiny, bioengineered EarthSpiders into the patient's body through the nearest orifice (didn't matter which one), and they went to work using their special training and natural web-spinning capabilities, emerging from the closest orifice (while the patient was still sedated, of course) when their mission had been accomplished-thereby explaining the old medics bromide: "He was so beat up, he was shitting (or spitting) spiders."

The mere thought of it made me shudder.

"Caught a chill, have you?"

I turned to find an orderly standing just inside the door. Clad in a skin-tight silver glittersuit so shiny it made my head hurt, she was holding a disk with the patient scans. "No, I just hate to see patients suffer," I said. It never hurt to impress on non-medics just how sensitive I was to the physical trauma of others, even though lately I'd had to work hard at it. I held out my hand, and she slapped the disk into my palm. I watched her glide away before slipping the disk into the reader. Nice tush, that one.

                                                               ***

"You haven't ingested a thing," said E-Dav later that evening as he reached across the table for my food-tube. "Are you off your feed?"

Who wouldn't be? But it was useless to complain since a future with actual chewable comestibles in it was about sixty light years away. "You saw my patient, E-Dav. That's enough to make anybody queasy."

"Just because he's got five digits instead of three doesn't make him unworthy of treatment."

"Her."

"Really? How'd you find that out?" He sat up straight, dropping the spent food-tube on the table.

"Preggers. According to the scans. It could be our first Nebulan delivery, although I'm hoping fetal development may be too premature for it to recover from the blow to the womb, thereby leading to a miscarriage. Otherwise..."

"Oh shit." Rolling his eyes Earthward, E-Dav ran his fingers through his dreads. "Don't play Prime Mover, O-Cler."

"The new regulations say-"

"-You don't have to quote chapter and verse to me. I mem'd them only two shifts ago. But you can't do it. It isn't right."

"Right by Nebulan standards or your stupid Earthling Principles?"

"By universal standards. Dammit, O-Cler, I know the regulations say we have to respect the Nebulans' wishes not to have interspecies mixing. But to obey their wishes in this case would be to commit murder."

I shoved my chair back and stood up. "Maybe you can afford to take the high road, E-Dav. If they don't like your attitude here, you can always go on home to that forty-hectare spread of yours on Centares Alpha. But I don't have the option, the property, or the connections."

This time he stood up. "I hear you say that one more time, asshole, and you're gonna be spitting and shitting spiders!"

"Hey! Lighten up!" The quartermaster barged through the mess hall and grabbed E-Dav by the arm. "No violence, docs."

E-Dav shrugged him off. "Sure. No problem."

I stood there, watching as he stomped off, the self-righteous prig. Anyway, it was the old regs dictating that we keep our hands off the Nebulans. The new ones- I'd mem'd them too, right after they'd shown up on the MustRead bulletin. But I could have sworn something significant had changed.

Well, no point in drugging a second night in a row, especially since I still wasn't feeling A-OK. On the way to my quarters, I passed DataCentral, pausing as I pondered whether it might be a good idea to recheck the new regulations. Naw. E-Dav probably had it right.

In the safe haven of my sleepbay, I checked the databanks to see if my patient had taken a turn for the worse. Nope. Then I stripped and stepped into the clean-stall, emerging twenty minutes later, scrubbed, shaved, flossed, brushed, inoculated, and aromatic. Even so, sleep would not come.

I lay there, thinking about E-Dav and the new (old?) regs and his stubborn adherence to so-called "Principles of Humanity" that were rooted in an ancient age of oppression on Earth that, for some unfathomable reason, eventually had resulted in the coffee-with-cream skin coloring so characteristic of many evolved Earthlings. So, yes, I understood him thinking he was above the rules in this case. After all, it was tough to go against a deeply imprinted cultural prejudice.

I, on the other hand, having hailed from Ophiuchi-8, only knew about the Principles because E-Dav, in a drunken stupor one night, had rambled on and on about his and other Earthlings' so-called heritage. "Do unto others" was one Principle, I seemed to recall. And then there was "one man, one vote," whatever that meant. Of course, "Thou shalt not kill" was the one at issue here.

But thou shalt, I said to myself, hoping once again that nature would take its course and absolve me of any need to actually do anything about the child. Still, the regulations required it in these cases. Even half-wit Persies knew that gene dominance could not be predicted, meaning one day we might all end up with three digits. And then who could qualify as a medic? No. I owed it to myself, my self-preservation, even my chosen profession, to do my duty.

                                                               ***

"Shhhh," came the urgent whisper. Her eyelids fluttered, and she clamped her mandibles tight to swallow the scream. The pain was now unbearable, and there was no Surrogate Sister there to take on the worst of it so that she could concentrate on pushing.

"Could I give you something for the pain?" the voice inquired, the speaker's soft lips close against her eyelid so that no one else could hear.

She held her thumb up. As the soothing scent of Ortium filled the room, the Nebula spiraled into view, its vast swirling carpet of gasses and stars mesmerizing in its splendor. She glided among the planets, slipping past white stars and dwarfs, skirting the edges of black holes, bathed in colors too myriad to be named, until she heard crying.

ELECTIVE SURGERY

The dark-skinned doctor with the dreadlocks drew the baby from her womb, gave it a quick clean-scan, and placed it in her arms. Grabbing the infant's tiny fist, she pried it open. There were five of them, which was two more than she'd been expecting. Now both she and her child were outcasts, doomed to deportation the moment she recovered. Those like her who tried to escape were hunted to the end of any galaxy that dared to offer them shelter. But that would never happen. No world offering a decent chance at living ever flouted Universe Conventions. Unless...

Ears hotly flushed, she beheld the medic's face. Palm-to-palm, she pressed her five digits against his. Then she held up the infant's arm. "Please. You cut?"

                                                               ***

The databank alarm interrupted a wild dream involving me and the silver-suited, lush tushed orderly. Somehow, we'd reached simultaneous climax without using Erotofix. She hadn't even undressed. Halfway stuck in dreamland, I should have noticed how dim the ops-room was when I barged through the doorway. "The hell do you think you're doing, E-Dav?"

No one was there. The ops-pads were all empty, the instruments stowed, and the biowaste container-which I hoped did not contain the evidence of two, maybe even four, surgically severed digits-had been removed. "You can't do this, E-Dav! There are rules!"

Just as they were supposed to, the sonicseal walls soaked up my screams like a Porrimian sponge. Nobody on the vessel wanted to overhear the agony of an inadequately anesthetized patient. And, hey, everybody screws up sometimes. We're not gods.

I punched my passcode into the recycled waste databank, which had dutifully recorded the following remnants of sentient beings deposited during the last cycle: four fingers and a placenta.

I ran down the corridor, stopping briefly in DataCentral. The new regs. The new regs. Ah. "The Nebulans' desire for no interspecies mixing is to be respected at all costs. Nebulans displaying non-Nebulan physical or mental attributes are to be immediately turned over to the nearest Nebulan consul." Okay. That, I-well, actually, both of us-already knew. But there was something about the particular duties of medics... There it was: "Notwithstanding the medic's sacred oath, no measures whatsoever shall be taken to preserve the life of a nonpure Nebulan." See, E-Dav? I was about to exit the program when I noticed the date at the end of the "page." Altari 4, 5622. What?

I could swear that was the date of the old regs. Again, I searched "new regs." Again, I found the same date. This. Could. Not. Be.

Before exiting the program, I took a stab at searching for "old regs." And there they were, dated Pleiadio 18, 5800, clearly absolving medics from any guilt-by-association if they saved the life of a deviant Nebulan under their care. Some mem-deficient, rusted-out data entry 'bot had switched the f***ing regs!

I kicked the display terminal, sending a shower of pixels down the darkening screen. "E-Dav!" I screamed. "Where are you?"

Racing down the corridor, I skidded to a halt at the door to Admitting. "You seen E-Dav?" I asked the attendant, an Andromedan with only four arms.

"Took his girlfriend off in the two-seater."

Shit. "Just him and the girl? Nobody else?" Like maybe a squalling infant?

"How the hell should I know," said the truculent 'Drom. "I wasn't here when they signed out."

Shit and double shit. I grabbed a quickmover and hustled down three decks to the launch pad where I saw a bunch of Vegans swarming all over the wrecked Nebulan starship, salvaging what they could for spare parts. "Hey!" I yelled. "Any of you guys seen Doctor E-Dav?"

One of them jerked his thumb in the direction of the now empty launchport. "Took off about an hour ago."

"Oh, man," I said to my departed colleague. "You can't get very far in that, you know. You'll never reach Centares."

"Paging Doctor O-Cler," came a tinny voice just barely audible over the din of the Vegan salvage operation. "Report to the ops-room stat!"

"Oh, E-Dav," I whispered. "Why? We don't have to do elective surgery in deep space. You didn't have to go. I thought your archaic Principles of Humanity no longer applied. But they do! Under the new regs, you-no-I could have saved the kid. No questions asked. And I would have! Now, you're all gonna wind up de-" Oh, man. Of course, E-Dav knew the two-seater's limited range. I could feel my tear ducts filling up with rage and frustration. "Was it worth it?" I yelled.

Echoes reverberated from the launchpad's walls in an endless mocking litany of "it...it...it."

                                                               ***