The Settlers (12 page)

You underwent Soma, what -- five years ago?
 

Six, Tasneem says.

She is sitting in a bowl-shaped chair, knees carefully crossed.
She rests her hands on her thighs and tries to keep breathing smoothly.
 

Six years, Blair says.

He's a natural, she thinks.
He leans back just a bit, then finds his way forward when asking more intimate questions, as if bringing himself into the story itself.

Offscreen, Tamara is thinking the same thing.

Six years, Blair repeats.
And tell me, did you know any of the Soma patients who have unfortunately passed away?

I didn't, Tasneem says.
Actually, I don't know any Soma patients personally.
There aren't so many of us, you know.
 

And Soma is administered on all three stations now, Blair adds, which makes it a little harder to meet, I presume.

I'm sure, Tasneem says.

I want to ask you a question, and I hope you'll answer it honestly, Blair says, leaning forward a tiny bit.
 

Of course, Tasneem says.
I'll try.

Blair sets his jaw and softens his eyes.
Are you scared?
 

Tasneem slows her breathing, hesitates.
 

Blair waits patiently.

I --

It's okay, he says when Tasneem falters a little.

Tasneem exhales slowly.
Yes.
Of course, I'm scared.
With the news, I'm not sure anybody wouldn't be.
 

What does it feel like, knowing that death may be coming?
 

She closes her eyes.
It feels...
hollow.
Inevitable.
 

But so far, you've been lucky, Blair says.

Very, she answers, opening her eyes.
 

Do you feel cheated?
 

Cheated?
 

You underwent months of psychiatric evaluation, of painful investigation of your past, for a treatment that is designed to extend your life by as long as one hundred years, Blair says.
With Soma, your life expectancy of one hundred years just became two hundred.
And that's just speculation, because nobody knows how effective the treatment will be at such distant points in the future.
So, yes, that's my question -- do you feel cheated?

Tasneem shakes her head.
I don't know.
I hadn't thought about it in quite that way.
I suppose it's possible, but for now, I'm alive.
Ask me again when I'm dead?

Blair laughs.
Well, let me ask you about that streak in your hair, then.

Oh, this, Tasneem says, fingering the white stripe in her otherwise dark hair.
 

So far, the patients who have died from Soma have reportedly witnessed their own hair go white before they passed away, Blair says.
What does that white stripe mean to you?
 

Tasneem looks up at the lock of white hair that she's holding away from her face.
It means, so far, that I'm a survivor.
 

I wonder if perhaps, to you, it symbolizes the approach of your own mortality, or would you characterize it more as the souvenir of a brush with death?
 

Tasneem considers this.
I can't say, really.
This happened about a month ago.
How soon after their hair went white did the other patients die?
 

Most were within days, Blair says.

Perhaps I'm a lucky survivor, then, Tasneem says.

Is there anything about you that might have countered the treatment's horrible side effect?
Perhaps something about your lifestyle?

I practice yoga, Tasneem says.
I don't drink.
 

No secret weapons, then, Blair says with a smile.

I can't think of any, she answers.

Let's assume the worst, Blair says.
Let's assume that you leave here today, and you were to die tonight.
 

That's morbid, Tasneem says.

It is.
But if that were the case -- would you want to share any last words with the rest of mankind here, today?

Tasneem thinks about it.
I don't think I have anything worth saying, she says.
I'm not that eloquent.

Blair grins.
Well, we will continue to hope for the best for you, Tasneem Kyoh.
Thanks for being here today.

Afterward, Blair shakes her hand, then says, No kidding, is there something you're doing?
 

What do you mean?
Tasneem asks.

The dead Soma patients were sheer white, he says.
Hair, pure white.
Yours seems to have stopped.
I just can't help thinking of it as a sign that you're going to get through this.
Like this stripe is your battle scar.

Maybe it is, Tasneem says.
 

They shake hands again, and he walks her to the lobby.
 

If anything happens -- anything at all, he says, will you call me?
 

I'll call you before I call my doctor, she says.
 

I don't mean to be selfish, Blair says.
Really, I don't.
But I think you may have just made my career tonight.
 

I'm glad, Blair.
I hope so.

Be safe, Tasneem.
Live forever.

I hope to, she says.
 

He watches her go, small and composed.
Then he steps back into the studio, and heads for Tamara's office.

Emil doesn't like this hospital.

There are seven on Station Aries.
They wrap like a sleeve around the ring-shaped station, and rotate slowly as the days pass.
Each of the patients' quarters has a beautiful view of Earth, though Earth is not so beautiful itself anymore.
The patients can see the sun, and sometimes the moon, and they can watch the hurricanes that gnaw at the coastlines far below.
 

On a good day, they can see the lifeboats singing into the heavens like balls of light.
 

There are always enough beds.
 

But this hospital is a farce.
It is the only one on Station Galileo, which is a hideous block that lumbers around the Earth now.
 

He thinks back on the stations.
Ganymede, the first, was designed for function and immediacy, and was based on the lessons learned by NASA and Roscosmos and others.
It was expected to be full of cables and exposed guts, and it was.
Over the years, Ganymede's residents have renovated the station, turning it into a glowing filament of life.
He hears that Ganymede is the station most visible from Earth.

Cassiopeia was not much better to begin with, and has not improved with time.
He hears it described as a shopping mall, an industrial park.
It is a complex stack of cubes and corridors, where people are often lost.
 

And Aries -- home sweet Aries -- is the fleet's golden star, a series of rings that spin and turn like Saturn.
Most refugees from the planet below request asylum on Aries.
It is a technological hub, though it was not designed as such.
It has emerged as a home for science, while Cassiopeia has developed a reputation as a home for believers.
 

Everyone had expected that Galileo, named for one of the great astronomers, would trump them all.

Instead, the entire station looked like a school cafeteria.
 

Its hospital was no better.
 

Windowless.
 

Bland.

The corridors were infinitely long.
The floor, ceiling and walls were all the same interminable shade of beige, so that it was not difficult to lose track of yourself as you walked.
The smell of iodine hung in the air, as if doctors were conducting business on a Civil War battlefield instead of in a floating hospital in space.
 

Perhaps that is what bothers Emil most.
 

This is space, goddammit.
Why does it feel like a shipping container at the bottom of the sea?

He picks up his coffee cup and abandons his table in the physician's lounge, taking his screenview with him.
He often uses it to watch the public video feeds broadcast from the Aries.
There's one external camera on that space station that isn't too far from his own office, and watching the slow pinwheel of Earth past the station reminds him just a little bit of home.
 

He dumps the coffee out and throws away the cup, tucking the screenview beneath his arm.

At he door, he pauses.

What is that infernal buzzing?
he asks.

There is one other doctor in the lounge.
She glances up at him, frowns, and then looks up at the lights.

He follows her gaze to the ceiling, where fluorescent bulbs hum behind textured plastic covers.
 

You're shitting me, he says.

The other doctor shakes her head.
I do not shit you, she says.

Emil yanks the door open.
It's like they time-traveled to the 1980s to build this place, he grumbles.

The other doctor returns to her crossword.
1970s, maybe, she says.
 

Emil smiles despite himself.
Hey, he says.
 

The doctor looks up.

I'm Emil Widla, he says.

I know, she says.
Soma guy.
Don't envy you.

He stares, waiting for her name, but she doesn't offer it.

So he leaves.

Seventy-six Soma patients are dead.

The treatments were finally banned when the mortality count hit fifty, which meant that nearly two hundred people were given Soma before the wall came down.
One hundred eighty-five, actually.
This befuddled Emil.
While Soma patients were already dying, there were still people lining up for treatment, and new doctors emerging who were quite willing to administer it.

Frank Hart and Amelie Golding, the other two physicians licensed for Soma treatment, were both dead now.
 

Golding had attempted suicide twice, and had been resuscitated both times.
Emil had actually been on his way to visit her when she finally managed to finish the job.
He guesses that when you fail at the easy way -- both of her prior attempts had involved medications -- you gain the nerve to go out hard.
 

She had cut her own throat.

Frank had gone into hiding when he and his family started receiving death threats.
He turned up underneath one of the station cars on Ganymede.
Nobody saw anything, and he had been labeled a suicide as well.
Emil suspected otherwise, but had troubles of his own.
He wasn't unfamiliar with death threats, either.
Maybe he was spared because he was trying to treat the victims when nobody else was.
 

Of the remaining one hundred nine patients, forty have agreed to come to Galileo for observation and medical attention.
The sixty-nine left refused to spend their unknown number of final days within Galileo's walls, and Emil cannot blame them.
If at any moment you might die, better to spend those precious minutes with family, or space-diving from Aries' inner ring.

But here he is now, with a meager support staff and little patience for the daily media requests that pile up on his desk.

He walks slowly down Corridor 7, where most of the forty have been sequestered from the rest of the hospital.
It is eerily silent here.
General hospital staff are not permitted.
While the corridor is not quarantined, it may as well be.
Patients are not permitted visitors.
Emil thinks this is probably the reason most Soma patients refused to participate.
 

Who wants to spend their last days forcibly removed from their loved ones?
 

So the forty are a strange bunch.
Most are isolationists and introverts.
Most are very, very wealthy.
Soma is not the most affordable treatment on the market.
Well, that's not true.
Before it was banned, the cost dropped dramatically, and people with little to lose signed up for what had become certain death.
 

And yet they hope.
 

They hope for a cure.
They hope they are an exception.
They hope for an asteroid to tear through the entire fleet, so that at least if they have to die, everybody else does, too.

Emil pauses beside the first room.
 

Nurse Lynne appears from nowhere.
 

Where did you come from?
Emil asks.

From room 22, the nurse responds.
Mr.
Fitz is displeased with his room.
Again.

Mr.
Fitz is quite welcome to leave, Emil says.
It is the only way he will find a room more to his liking.
 

Are you making rounds?

I'm about to, he answers.
Why?

The nurses are in the office watching something, she says.
 

He takes the screenview she offers him.
What is it?
he asks.
 

She touches the screen, and it begins to play.

The image is of a warmly-lit news studio.
Two large chairs, shaped like deep bowls, stand unoccupied.
Beyond the chairs -- Emil sighs at the image -- is large glass wall, through which Earth, in its haunted glory, hangs like a glowing coal.
 

Theme music plays, and two people enter and sit down in the bowls.
 

It's Tasneem, Emil says.

Nurse Lynne nods.
Yes.

And that man -- he's familiar.
 

His name is Blair Hudgens, Doctor.
He's been pestering the office for a chance to interview you for months.
 

Ah, Emil says.
Let's watch, let's watch.

Did you know any of the Soma patients who have unfortunately passed away?

Actually, I don't know any Soma patients personally.
 

Emil frowns.
Her hair, he says.
It's white!
But -- it's only a little bit.
A stripe, almost.

I think it's pretty, the nurse says.
 

Emil shoots the nurse a hard look.
White means death, he says.
 

Not for her, she says.
 

He pinches his eyes shut.
What do you mean, not for her?
 

Here, the nurse says.
 

She advances the video.
 

Watch this, she says.

Let me ask you about that streak in your hair, then.

Oh, this?

Patients who have died from Soma have witnessed their own hair go white before they died.
What does that white stripe in your hair mean to you?
 

That I'm a survivor, I guess.
 

Would you characterize it as the souvenir of a brush with death?

This happened about a month ago.
How soon after their hair turned white did the other patients die?

Most within days.

Perhaps I'm a survivor, then.
 

Emil turns to the nurse in surprise.
How long ago was this?
This interview?

The nurse says, I don't know.
I think it was last month.