“Oh,” I said.
Oh, Rhym agreed.
CHAPTER 17
AFTER LUNCH, I CHECKED IN on Helen. She was still camped out in the Cryo unit observation lounge as if she had grown into the furniture. She asked if she could see her surviving crew yet. I told her soon, though maybe not Carlos unless he started feeling more inclined toward visitors. I promised to ask them if I could further update her on their care, however. I told her that Oni was not yet ready to be awakened, and that I would keep Helen apprised of her progress, as well.
She asked after Dr. Zhiruo and whether she—Helen—would be receiving additional treatment. I told her that she would, as soon as Dr. Zhiruo’s infection was under control and the quarantine was lifted. I told her that the next group—I managed not to say shipment—of her crew would be arriving at that point, and that some were already in ships in holding patterns near Core General, waiting for us to be open for business again.
She asked when the quarantine was going to be lifted.
That was a harder one, and I thought about it anxiously for a moment or two before coming up with an answer that seemed honest to me, but filtered of all my own ability to catastrophize. I was perfectly capable of keeping myself up all night, staring into space and coming up with Ways Things Could Be Worse. Like the one where the Synarche never could contain the meme, and eventually everybody organic on Core General had to take turns deactivating and purging each other’s foxes to make sure there was no data transfer, and then we evacuated as many of the hospital’s staff and patients as possible before leaving the rest to starve, run out of power and oxygen, and eventually spiral into the Well on a decaying orbit to be pulled apart like Rilriltok swiping my spaghetti.
Or the one where the meme was already loose in the galaxy, winging its way around on data packets and wiping out a thousand ans of interspecies civilization in one fell blow.
Thinking like that made me a good disaster planner and emergency response coordinator, and often got Sally wandering into my brain after lights-out to pull the plug and make sure I actually slept a little.
What I said was, “Eventually. I don’t know when, but I can assure you that it is a tremendous annoyance to everybody, and a very grave hardship to many. The hospital is treating it as an emergency situation, and working to resolve it as fast as we can.”
All in all, it was one of the saner conversations I’d ever had with an upset Helen. Dr. Zhiruo might be out of commission, but the healing she had initiated seemed to be proceeding apace. Maybe all Helen had needed was some space in which to sort herself out.
Literally, I mean. Adequate data caching.
That reminded me that I had been so busy since we got back that I hadn’t checked on the machine. Hadn’t Zhiruo been treating that, too?
It definitely wasn’t my job. And I should be doing some more data sorting on the sabotage question while I had a free minute. After I checked on my patients here, I would go and do that, I decided.
Helen went back to her post by the window when I excused myself. I half expected to see footprints worn in the floor in her habitual spot.
Cheeirilaq intercepted me as I was heading toward the room housing Master Chief Carlos. Friend Dr. Jens.
“Goodlaw Cheeirilaq.” I had a feeling I knew what came next, and honestly it was convenient. Todia’s goal had been to introduce the Big Rock Candy Mountain survivors—the conscious ones, anyway—to the reality of systers and the Synarche. “Let me guess. You would like to question the master chief?”
Cheeirilaq froze so completely that when, a few moments later, it let out a held breath, I found myself sighing in sympathy. How did you know that?
“I was Judiciary myself, remember? It’s a logical next step in your investigation.”
I don’t recall having shared details of my investigation with you.
“Of course not. But you did tell me that it involved Afar and associated questions. And most doctors aren’t dumb.” I looked over at where Tralgar and another doctor I didn’t know were consulting on something. I’d been thinking of drafting one of the unit docs or nurses to be my sample syster, but they all had jobs to do. And here was Cheeirilaq, who wanted an opportunity to talk to Carlos and Jones.
Expedient. I could put off the research for another hour.
Linden was still not responding to queries, and the lifts were still down. I spared a moment to be grateful that the hospital’s senso and translation were operated on different protocols. I assumed that there was an AI—possibly Mercy—responsible for them, but the functions seemed to be largely autonomous.
Can you imagine any job more boring for a galactic supercomputer than translating endless complaints about the scrambled eggs?
I went into the master chief’s room first, leaving the door open and Cheeirilaq lurking behind its frame. Carlos looked up from a console he’d been fiddling with—the kind of thing you give kids whose brains aren’t myelinated enough for a fox yet. “Hi, Doc,” he said. “I found an interesting game. I think it’s civics for kids or something.”
“Good,” I said. “I’m glad you’re using the brain cells.”
“I don’t suppose you have a timeline showing when more of my crew might be arriving?” His voice had a hesitant hopefulness that reached into my chest and squeezed. I noticed that he did not, specifically, ask about his wife.
“A week, maybe? Ten diar? Not long now. Would it help if I arranged for you to have access to any telemetry we get from
