wish, but this place has to be kept quiet, preferably kept dark. I’ll stay here and monitor her vital signs every few minutes. As long as she’s still responding, there’s nothing to worry about. If she should stop responding, then there’s — well, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”
One by one, sobered, they went to the food console, dialed themselves some quick and easy rations, and started to carry them out of the room.
Teague said, “Can’t I stay with her, Peake? I’ll be quiet, I won’t disturb her, I promise.”
Peake shook his head. “It wouldn’t do either of you any good. At this moment, even if she should come around and ask for you, the last thing she needs is your guilt! It’s absolutely imperative that if she wakes up, she should be kept quiet, should just lie there and vegetate, without being disturbed in any way. And if she doesn’t — well, that would be harder on you. I’ll send for you the minute you can do anything helpful, believe me, Teague.”
But while the others were collecting trays of food, more, Peake suspected, from habit than hunger, he approached Fontana.
“You’re the only other one with any medical training,” he said, very low. “If Ching doesn’t come around within a few hours, you know what it will mean: either a subdural or a depressed fracture. Either way, you know what that will mean.” He stared down at his hands, steadying them by an act of will. He said, more to himself than to Fontana, “It’s a simple operation, really. The Egyptians did it with their flint knives, and people lived through it; there’s evidence of new bone growth to prove that they lived years afterward.”
But inwardly, beneath the calmness, he was thinking; my first really major surgery, and it has to be on the brain. And on a friend!
Was this why they separated me from Jimson? If he had been the one hurt, could I have operated on him? Were they deliberately isolating me, so that as a surgeon I could be detached?
He kept his voice calm. “If I do have to operate, you’ll have to assist, you’re the only one who could manage it. You’d better be prepared for it; I hope it won’t come to that. But we may have to do it, as a last resort.”
And then he was frightened; for Fontana stared at him, her eyes wide, blank, expressionless, as if she were in shock. Her mouth twitched.
And then she said, harshly, her voice like a shriek, “Damn you, Peake, how stupid you are! Haven’t, you figured it out yet? Do you really think there’s anything we can do? You know as well as I do that this whole Crew business is a final test, and we’re just the ones who failed, that’s all! Not the ones who passed triumphantly, just the ones they thought they could spare! The Academy throws us out, every year, like spores, Ship crews going out to sink or swim, live or die, probably ninety out of a hundred of the Ships have died already, but it doesn’t matter, as long as one or two Ships get through to establish us on the stars — that’s all they care about, as long as one in a hundred might get through! We don’t have proper equipment, not even an X-ray — doesn’t that show you how little they care about our survival? Look at her!” She gestured at Ching’s blanketed, silent form. “She’s the only one of us who knows anything about computers, and we have a major computer failure — if they really cared about whether we survived, wouldn’t they create more of a backup system? We don’t even have any way to communicate with Earth in an emergency! Peake, we’re dead, don’t you see? Even if she lives, she could be a vegetable, massive brain damage, never be able to fix the computer — if she dies, she’s just the lucky one who died first! And you’re thinking about saving her life with a major brain operation — you, a half-trained medical student they crammed with a few facts and sent off thinking you were a surgeon? Forget it, Peake! We’re going to die, that’s all there is to it, and we’ve just got to accept it!“ Her voice rose to a scream. ”Accept it! Accept it! We’re dead, dead, dead, we’re all of us dead! This whole Crew business is just a sick, horrible joke! We’re the salmon swimming upstream, the lemmings plunging out into space — and we’re one of the ones who didn’t make it, we’re dead, ail of us, dead!”
Shocked silence in the main cabin. Peake blinked, squeezing his eyes shut at the vehemence of her rage. Fontana! Fontana, of all people, the calm one, the psychologist, the one who helped everyone else with their problems — if she could blow loose this way, was there even a grain of hope for any of them?
Fontana thought not….
But Peake acted without thought, from his training; by sheer reflex. He swung back his hand and slapped Fontana hard, right across the mouth.
“Shut up,” he said, his voice cold and clipped, “I will not have my patient disturbed with this kind of hysterical nonsense.”
“It’s not hysteria and it’s not nonsense and you know it,” Fontana screamed at him.
Peake gestured with a quick movement of his head.
“Moira. Teague. Get her out of here. Take her to her quarters, give her a shot of tranquilizer if you have to — Teague, you’re on Life Support, you know the stuff. Knock her out, sit on her if you have to. Every one of you, out of here, right now. Ching’s going to be kept quiet, if ! have to shoot every damned one of you full of sedatives! Out, damn it! Not another word!”
He watched, his face like stone, as Teague and Moira grabbed Fontana around the waist and wrestled her out of the cabin. She was crying now, tears raining down her face, her mouth contorted, broken protests still coming from her lips.
The sphincter locks finally closed behind them; Ravi, always practical, had caught up the full trays of food and taken them along. Peake let himself collapse into his seat, staring at Ching’s pale motionless face. After a moment he got up again, got himself a hot caffeine drink from the console and sat down, sipping it, beside Ching.
That was the textbook talking. Suppose Fontana was right, after all? Isn’t all this a fairly futile gesture? Should F accept what Fontana said, that we’re all dead, and just let Ching die in peace? His face taut, reaching for the almost indefinable pulse, he told himself that the choice might not lie in his hands at all.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Teague thrust Fontana, still struggling, into her cubicle. He said dryly, “Get that hypo ready, Moira.”
Fontana had fallen heavily to the floor. She stirred slightly, sat up. Her voice was very calm.
“I don’t need it, Teague. I won’t make any more trouble, I promise you.”
Teague hesitated. Then he said in a hard voice, “We have trouble enough with Ching. I think we should knock you out and make sure you won’t give us any more problems.”
“No,” Fontana said, and Moira interrupted him.
“She’s right, Teague. Peake said himself that she’s the only one qualified to help him if he needs help. She can’t help him if she’s doped up. Fontana, do you want me to stay with you? Do you need someone to talk to?”
“No. Really. But I think I — I do need to be alone a while.”
Teague still hesitated, but finally he put the hypo away. He said, “All right. But don’t let yourself get into that state again. If you need somebody, just yell. One of us will be here.” Roughly, he put his arms around her and hugged her hard. “Look, don’t worry about it. Peake understands how upset we all are over this. Try and eat something, Fontana.”
“All right. Leave me the tray,” Fontana said, and when the cubicle door had closed behind them, she sighed, reached for the tray and put a forkful of food — cold now — into her mouth.
In spite of her agitation, she felt deeply moved. In the midst of his own agitation over Ching, he had taken the time to try and comfort her. Yes, he had mistaken the source of her distress, but she felt warmed by his concern.
Yet, after all, why should he not be concerned? They had been friends since the age of five, had briefly been lovers. Teague was not the kind of person to desert an old lover simply because he loved someone else.
They are all my friends, she thought, I owe it to them to die with as much dignity as they do, and not make it harder for us all to die.
And then — it was like a blinding light — she thought, But we are all going to die sometime anyhow. And people have always died. More stupidly than this, more uselessly than this. Before there were spaceships or Academies, there was always the prowling sabre-tooth tiger outside the cave. The very act of being born
