it. And if it was that bad, it would certainly help keep her mind off her own troubles!
'Very well,' the AI said agreeably. 'Shall I begin?'
'Yes,' she told it, with another caress of her cheek on Ted's soft fur. 'Please.'
Pota and Braddon watched their daughter with frozen faces, faces that Tia was convinced covered a complete welter of emotions that they didn't want her to see. She took a deep breath, enunciated 'Chair forward, five feet,' and her Moto-Chair glided forward and stopped before it touched them.
'Well, now I can get around at least,' she said, with what she hoped sounded like cheer. 'I was getting awfully tired of the same four walls!'
Whatever it was that she had, and now she heard the words 'proto-virus' and 'dystrophic sclerosis' bandied about more often than not, the medics had decided it wasn't contagious. They'd let Pota and Braddon out of isolation, and they'd moved Tia to another room, one that had a door right onto the corridor. Not that it made much difference, except that Anna didn't have to use a decontam airlock and pressure-suit anymore. And now Kenny came to see her in person. But four white walls were still four white walls, and there wasn't much variation in rooms.
Still, she was afraid to ask for things to personalize the room. Afraid that if she made it more her own, she'd be stuck in it. Forever.
Her numbness and paralysis extended to most of her body now, except for her facial muscles. And there it stopped. Just as inexplicably as it had begun.
They'd put her in the quadriplegic version of the Moto-Chair; just like Kenny's except that she controlled hers with a few commands and series of tongue-switches and eye movements. A command sent it forward, and the direction she looked would tell it where to go. And hers had mechanical 'arms' that followed set patterns programmed in to respond to more commands. Any command had to be prefaced by 'chair' or 'arm'. A clumsy system, but it was the best they could do without direct synaptic connections from the brainstem, like those of a shell-person.
Her brainstem was still intact, anyway. Whatever it was had gotten her spine, but not that. Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, she thought with bitter irony, how was the play?
'What do you think, pumpkin?' Braddon asked, his voice quivering only a little.
'Hey, this is stellar, Dad,' she replied cheerfully. 'It's just like piloting a ship! I think I'll challenge Doctor Kenny to a race!'
Pota swallowed very hard and managed a tremulous smile. 'It won't be for too long,' she said without conviction. 'As soon as they find out what's set up housekeeping in there, they'll have you better in no time.'
She bit her lip to keep from snapping back and dug up a fatuous grin from somewhere. The likelihood of finding a cure diminished more with every day, and she knew it. Neither Anna nor Kenny made any attempt to hide that from her.
But there was no point in making her parents unhappy. They already felt bad enough.
She tried out all the points of the chair for them, until not even they could stand it anymore. They left, making excuses and promising to come back, and they were succeeded immediately by a stream of interns and neurological specialists, each of whom had more variations on the same basic questions she had answered a thousand times, each of whom had his own pet theory about what was wrong.
'First my toes felt like they were asleep when I woke up one morning, but it wore off. Then it didn't wear off. Then instead of waking up with tingles, I woke up numb. Not sir, it never actually hurt. No, ma'am, it only went as far as my heel at first. Yes, sir, then after two days my fingers started. No ma'am, just the fingers not the whole hand.'
Hours of it. But she knew that they weren't being nasty, they were trying to help her, and being able to help her depended on how cooperative she was.
But their questions didn't stop the questions of her own. So far, it was just sensory nerves and voluntary muscles and nerves. What if it went to the involuntary ones, and she woke up unable to breathe? What then? What if she lost control of her facial muscles? Every little tingle made her break out in a sweat of panic, thinking it was going to happen.
Nobody had answers for any questions. Not hers, and not theirs.
Finally, just before dinner, they went away. After about a half an hour, she mastered control of the arms enough to feed herself, saving herself the humiliation of having to call a nurse to do it. And the chair's own plumbing solved the humiliation of the natural result of eating and drinking.
After supper, when the tray was taken away, she was left in the growing darkness of the room, quite alone. She would have slumped, if she could have. It was just as well that Pota and Braddon hadn't returned; having them there was a strain. It was harder to be brave in front of them than it was in front of strangers.
