'Well, Tia,' said the AI's voice, changed to that of the 'doctor'. 'What brings you here?'
'My toes feel like they're asleep,' she said dutifully. 'They kind of tingle.'
'Is that all?' the 'doctor' asked, after a moment for the AI to access his library of symptoms. 'Are they colder than normal? Put your hand on the hand-plate, and your foot on the foot-plate, Tia.'
She obeyed, feeling very like a contortionist 'Well, the circulation seems to be fine,' the 'doctor' said, after the AI had a chance to read temperature and blood pressure, both of which appeared in the upper right-hand corner of the screen. 'Have you any other symptoms?'
'No,' she replied. 'Not really.' The 'doctor' froze for a moment, as the AI analyzed all the other readings it had taken from her during the past few days; what she'd eaten and how much, what she'd done, her sleep patterns.
The 'doctor' unfroze. 'Sometimes when children start growing very fast, they get odd sensations in their bodies,' the AI said. 'A long time ago, those were called 'growing pains'. Now we know it's because sometimes different kinds of tissue grow at different rates. I think that's probably what your problem is, Tia, and I don't think you need to worry about it. I'll prescribe some vitamin supplements for you, and in a few days you should be just fine.'
'Thank you,' she said politely, and made her escape, relieved to have gotten off so lightly.
And in a few days, the pins-and-needles did go away, and she thought no more about it. Thought no more, that is, until she went outside to her new 'dig' and did something she hadn't done in a year, she fell down. Well, she didn't exactly fall; she thought she'd sidestepped a big rock, but she hadn't. She rammed her toes right into it and went heavily to her knees.
The suit was intact, she discovered to her relief, and she was quite ready to get up and keep going, until she realized that her foot didn't hurt. And it should have, if she'd rammed it against the outcropping hard enough to throw her to the ground.
So instead of going on, she went back to the dome and pealed off suit and shoe and sock, and found her foot was completely numb, but black-and-blue where she had slammed it into the unyielding stone.
When she prodded it experimentally, she discovered that her whole foot was numb, from the toes back to the arch. She peeled off her other shoe and sock, and found that her left foot was as numb as her right
'Decom it,' she muttered. This surely meant another check-in with the medic.
Once again she climbed into the claustrophobic little closet at the back of the dome and called up the 'doctor'.
'Still got pins-and-needles, Tia?' he said cheerfully, as she wriggled on the hard seat.
'No,' she replied, 'But I've mashed my foot something awful. It's all black-and-blue.'
'Put it on the foot-plate, and I'll scan it,' the 'doctor' replied. 'I promise, it won't hurt a bit.'
Of course it won't, it doesn't hurt now, she thought resentfully, but did as she was told.
'Well, no bones broken, but you certainly did bruise it!' the 'doctor' said after a moment. Then he added archly, 'What were you doing, kicking the tutor?'
'No,' she muttered. She really hated it when the AI program made it get patronizing. 'I stubbed it on a rock, outside.'
'Does it hurt?' the 'doctor' continued, oblivious to her resentment.
'No,' she said shortly. 'It's all numb.'
'Well, if it does, I've authorized your bathroom to give you some pills,' the 'doctor' said with cloying cheer. 'Just go right ahead and take them if you need them. You know how to get them.'
The screen shut down before she had a chance to say anything else. I guess it isn't anything to worry about, she decided. The AI would have said something otherwise. It'll probably go away.
But it didn't go away, although the bruises healed. Before long she had other bruises, and the numbness of her feet extended to her ankles. But she told herself that the AI had said it would go away, eventually, and anyway, this wasn't so bad, at least when she mashed herself it didn't hurt.
She continued to play at her own little excavation, the new one, which she had decided was a grave-site. The primitives burned their dead though, and only buried the ashes with their flint-replicas of the skygods' wonderful things, hoping that the dearly departed would be reincarnated as sky-gods and return in wealth and
