Then I fainted.
CHAPTER 22
WHEN I BLINKED AWAKE, I was looking into a distorting mirror. My eyes seemed huge, brown and wide, their hazel-gold flecks and paler striations emphasized. My nose was too narrow. My lips seemed stretched and strange, and the shape of my chin was too pointed.
The goblin version of my face jerked back, shrinking as it fled. I blinked at Helen.
Helen did not blink back.
“I’m so happy that you’re back!” she blurted.
I remembered everything I’d figured out right before I got myself knocked out again and flinched. I needed to make sure I was right before I accused anybody.
I said, “How long was I gone?”
Helen settled her heels and folded her arms under the molded bosom. “Long enough.”
You never come back from a trip to good news. Just never.
“Calliope?” I asked.
Under sedation. Rilriltok’s familiar buzz.
I looked around. Head turned smoothly, no more than the usual amount of pain. I propped myself on my elbows and discovered that I was in a trauma treatment room. “Hey. The gravity is working.”
“Mechanical got spin back about a standard ago,” she agreed. “It was an impressive engineering accomplishment, spinning up without further disordering all the environments.”
“I bet.” I stretched, curling my toes. Could be worse. “What happened to the quarantine?”
I hadn’t been aware that a person like Helen had the ability to generate such dire laughter. “That ship has lifted.”
I noticed O’Mara in the treatment room, standing a little behind Helen. And there was Rilriltok, hovering over their left shoulder.
The breeze of its wings was exceptionally pleasant.
I said, “Somebody please get me a drink.”
O’Mara looked at me. It was obvious, I suppose, that I didn’t mean club soda and lime.
Dr. Jens! Rilriltok was mad at me, because it called me Doctor rather than Friend Far be it from this individual to question the medical judgments of an esteemed colleague, but I really think—
It must have taken an extraordinarily large bolus of courage for the little Rashaqin to stand up to me like that. Conflict avoidance was the hallmark of its species and sex. I felt terrible for it when O’Mara interrupted, holding out a flask I hadn’t known they carried.
It had a Judiciary seal on it. I knew it had been given to them as a retirement gift, because I owned one like it. I didn’t carry my keepsake in my pocket, however.
When I first reached for it I reached too fast, too far—a lunge—as my exo overcompensated. I almost knocked the flask to the floor. Fortunately, it was closed, and O’Mara caught it before it dented on the deck. Good reflexes for an old person.
Ha. I wondered what they say about me. The gravity definitely seemed to be working again, anyway. And so did my exo’s reflexes.
I closed aching fingers around the flask. My exoskeleton clicked faintly against the metal. The sound startled me, but at least my grip was firm by then.
“Medicinal purposes,” said I.
“Medicinal purposes,” they agreed.
To my shipmates, I thought. Please don’t let any of them be criminals. I unscrewed the lid and drank, wiping my lips after.
Tequila.
I obviously hadn’t eaten anything in quite some time, because the warmth of the liquor raced through me. Capillary flush scorched my face; at least I had the comfort that my complexion would hide it. Though I supposed O’Mara thinking I was a cheap drunk was the least of my worries.
I handed the flask back. “You were obviously expecting me. Medical coma?”
“Just a nice nap while we fused your sternum for you,” O’Mara said. My hand didn’t sting, which told me they’d fixed the holes in my skin, also. “Your own crew insisted on operating on you. I think you’re going to be fine.”
They were Sally’s crew, not mine—not as long as I was seconded to O’Mara and Core General. That made me feel almost weepily touched by their loyalty.
Probably a sure sign that my brain chemicals needed a nudge, but I didn’t have the energy to put myself out even that much. Which was another downvote on my chemistry, come to think of it. I wondered where that loyalty would be when I pursued what I thought I knew.
Tears prickled my eye-corners.
Fine. Fine! I tuned myself, and instantly felt better. There were no resources to waste by not efficiently fixing small problems.
“Am I cleared to return to duty?”
Rilriltok buzzed grumpily.
“You’re not even cleared to sit up in bed, Jens. Not that we have the time to worry about that now.” O’Mara held out a hand. “Alley-oop. You can have a quick shower—which you badly need, by the way—and then we have to go talk to Starlight.”
You could have waited for us to get you out, said Rilriltok reasonably.
“Could I have?”
It sighed. No. I suppose you couldn’t have.
“Hey,” I said suddenly. “Translation is working! Is Linden back online?”
O’Mara and Helen looked at each other. Rilriltok bobbed a little lower in the air.
“After a fashion,” O’Mara said. “You know what we said about quarantine? Come on, shake a tentacle. We need to move, and it’ll be faster to demonstrate than explain.”
I badly needed to have a conversation with someone. But I badly needed to have it in private. And I didn’t think I could get rid of O’Mara until I ran this errand.
The shower, hydration, and a couple of stimulant tabs helped clear the nebulas from around my thoughts, though not as effectively as coffee would have. And not that my resultant ideas precisely blazed with the clarity of newborn stars. I pulled on scrubs and a lab coat and liberated a fresh hardsuit actuator from a locker on my way out of the bathroom. Possibly I was never going to let myself be more than a meter away from one again under any circumstances.
In the process of getting cleaned up and dressed, I was reminded that my exo was still overcompensating and twitchy. I knocked over toiletries three times, and the stack of clean clothes twice. (The second time it
