‘Oh, it’s a lovely chain of peptides and such, it is. Makes you feel like you’re invincible without compromising your judgment. It does demand that you maintain a certain level in your bloodstream, though. Clever fellow that I was, I had no trouble appropriating adequate supplies from whatever facility I happened to be working in at the time.
‘I was considered most promising, a physician-to-be of exceptional gifts and stamina, insightful and caring. No one suspected that my primary patient was always myself.
‘It happened during my first residency. The centre was delighted to have me. I did the work of two, never complained, was almost always correct in my diagnoses and prescriptions. I did a thirty-six-hour stretch in an ER, went out, got high as an orbital shuttle, was crawling into bed to lose myself in the sensation of floating all night, when the ‘com buzzed.
‘A pressure unit had blown on the centre’s fuel station.
Everyone they could get hold of was called in to help. Thirty seriously injured but only a few had to be sent to intensive care.
The rest just needed quick but rote attention. Nothing complicated. Nothing a halfway competent intern couldn’t have managed. I figured I’d take care of it myself and then hiphead it back home before anyone noticed that I was awfully bright and cheery for someone who’d just been yanked out of the sack at three in the morning.’ He paused a moment to gather his thoughts.
‘Eleven of the thirty died when I prescribed the wrong dosage of painkiller. Such a small thing. Such a simple thing.
Any fool could’ve handled it. Any fool. That’s Midaphine for you. Hardly ever affects your judgment. Only once in a while.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said softly.
‘Don’t be.’ His expression was unforgiving. ‘No one else was.
I got seven years in prison, lifetime probation, and my license permanently reduced to a 3-C, with severe restrictions on what and where I could practice. While in prison I kicked my wonderful habit. Didn’t matter. Too many relatives around who remembered their dead. I never had a chance of getting the restrictions revised. I embarrassed my profession, and the examiners delighted in making an example of me. After that you can imagine how many outfits were eager to employ someone with my professional qualifications. So here I am.’
‘I’m still sorry.’
‘For me? Or about what happened? If it’s the latter, so am I.
About the prison sentence and subsequent restrictions, no. I deserved it. I deserved everything that’s happened to me. I wiped out eleven lives. Casually, with a dumb smile on my face.
I’m sure that the people I killed had promising careers as well.
I destroyed eleven families. And while I can’t ever forget, I’ve learned to live with it. That’s one positive thing about being assigned to a place like this. It helps you learn how to live with things that you’ve done.’
‘Did you serve time here?’
‘Yes, and I got to know this motley crew quite well. So when they stayed, I stayed. Nobody else would employ me.’ He moved to give her the injection. ‘So, will you trust me with an injector?’
As he was leaning toward her the alien hit the floor behind him as silently as it fell from the ceiling, landing in a supportive crouch and straining to its full height. It was astonishing and appalling how something that size could move so quietly. She saw it come erect, towering over the smiling medic, metallic incisors gleaming in the pale overhead light.
Even as she fought to make her paralyzed vocal cords function, part of her noted that it was slightly different in appearance from every alien type she had encountered previously. The head was fuller, the body more massive. The more subtle physical discrepancies registered as brief,
observational tics in the frozen instant of horror.
Clemens leaned toward her, suddenly more than merely concerned. ‘Hey, what’s wrong? You look like you’re having trouble breathing. I can—’
The alien ripped his head off and flung it aside. Still she didn’t scream. She wanted to. She tried. But she couldn’t. Her diaphragm pushed air but no sound.
It shoved Clemens’s spurting corpse aside and gazed down at her. If only it had eyes, a part of her thought, instead of visual perceptors as yet unstudied. No matter how horrible or bloodshot, at least you could connect with an eye. The windows of the soul, she’d read somewhere.
The alien had no eyes and, quite likely, no soul.
She started to shiver. She’d run from them before, and fought them before, but in the enclosed confines of the tomblike infirmary there was nowhere to run and nothing to fight with. It was all over. A part of her was glad. At least there would be no more nightmares, no more waking up screaming in strange beds. There would be peace.
‘Hey, you, get over here!’ Golic suddenly shouted. ‘Lemmee loose. I can help you. We can kill all these assholes.’
The Boschian vision turned slowly to regard the prisoner.
Then it looked once more at the immobile woman on the bed.
With a singular leap it flung itself at the ceiling, cablelike fingers grasping the edge of the gaping air duct through which it had arrived, and was gone. Skittering sounds echoed from above, quickly fading into the distance.
Ripley didn’t move. Nothing had happened. The beast hadn’t touched her. But then, she understood virtually nothing about them. Something about her had put it off. Perhaps they wouldn’t attack the unhealthy. Or maybe it had been something in Golic’s manner.
Though still alive, she wasn’t sure whether to be grateful or not.
IX
Andrews stood before his charges in the mess hall, silently surveying their expectant, curious faces while Dillon prepared to give his traditional invocation. Aaron sat nearby, wondering what his boss had on his mind.
‘All rise, all pray. Blessed is the Lord.’ The prisoners complied, striking reverent attitudes. Dillon continued.
‘Give us the strength, O Lord, to endure. We recognize we are poor sinners in the hands of an angry God. Let the circle be unbroken, until the day. Amen.’ Each prisoner raised his fist, then took a seat.
As Dillon surveyed them his formerly beatific expression twisted with appalling suddenness.
‘What the fuck is happening here? What is this bullshit that’s coming down? We got murder! We got rape! We got brothers in trouble! I don’t want no more bullshit around here! We got problems, we stand together.’
Andrews let the silence that followed Dillon’s outburst linger until he was confident he had everyone’s attention. He cleared his throat ceremoniously.
‘Yes, thank you, Mr. Dillon,’ he began in his usual no-nonsense tone. ‘All right. Once again this is rumour control.
Here are the facts.’
‘At 0400 hours prisoner Murphy, through carelessness and probably a good dose of stupidity on his part, was found dead in Vent shaft Seventeen. From the information gathered on the spot it would appear that he was standing too close to the ventilator fan when a strong downdraft struck, and was consequently sucked or blown into the blades. Medical Officer Clemens acted as coroner on the occasion and his official report is as straightforward as you might expect as to cause of death.’
Several of the prisoners murmured under their breath.
Andrews eyed them until they were quiet once more.
He began to pace as he spoke. ‘Not long thereafter prisoners Boggs, Rains, and Golic left on a routine forage and scavenge mission into the shafts. They were well equipped and presu-mably knew what they were about.’
‘I can confirm that,’ Dillon put in.
