Vale of Stars (13 page)

Helena moved in to hug her. That was the signal. Helena and her three associates tackled Yallia and expertly pinned her to the ground. Yallia found her arms held fast, a girl sitting on each. The third toady sat on her legs while Helena produced a small bag of brown, muddy liquid.

“You smelly shippie. You have to eat all of this before we let you go. Here,” she said, stuffing a pungent handful into Yallia’s mouth.

Yallia’s shrieks of terror quickly became muffled gags as she fruitlessly fought against Helena’s hands. Helena managed to force three handfuls down Yallia’s throat before Ms. Fletcher’s startled cries ended the torture.

Ms. Fletcher had fought off her disgust at Yallia’s initial arrival and continued presence in her class with professionalism—she was a teacher and took her job quite seriously. Still, when she arrived on the scene, a tiny part of her applauded Helena’s efforts. Outwardly, she radiated concern and disapproval toward the perpetrators, but she could not, despite her attempts to suppress the sadistic corner of her mind, entirely pity the coughing, retching shippie girl who lay at her feet.

Yallia vomited copiously onto the sand of the playground. A sudden, sharp, aggressive odor of chlorine drove the onlookers back and away—they had been trained from birth that the smell spelled death to them.

Ms. Fletcher was not an expert in any particular field, being a primary school teacher, but was reasonably well versed in practically every branch of knowledge. She knew what must be happening to Yallia—Helena must have forced some native plant or animal matter down her throat, which was now dissolving in the girl’s stomach acids. The combination of free chlorine in the biomatter was reacting with the hydrochloric acid in Yallia’s stomach and producing toxic chlorine gas.

“Children! Run to my classroom and stay there! Get away from her,” Ms. Fletcher shouted at the assembled youngsters. They needed no additional prodding. The smell of chlorine was enough to send them running in panic. Helena and her cohorts were among the last to leave. Helena herself showed no sign of remorse at the convulsing result of her anger but retreated with dignity back to the classroom.

Ms. Fletcher herself trembled with indecision. She knew she should help Yallia vomit up as much of the substance she had ingested, but her conditioned fear of chlorine and her disdain for the girl’s lineage threatened to override her natural instincts to help those in need. She remained, watching Yallia from perhaps ten meters’ distance and advancing in tiny, shuffling steps, as the girl slowly lost consciousness.

The medical personnel arrived soon after the school’s administrator placed the call. Yallia had been unconscious for no more than thirty minutes when the paramedics, in oxygen masks, attended to her. Kuarta and Dolen had been called as well and arrived only minutes behind the paramedics.

“What happened?” Kuarta asked of the assembled people around her daughter, her voice showing no sign of the emotions she was feeling. She could smell the chlorine in the air, but the clinical part of her had taken over, and she was prepared to solve the problem, whatever it turned out to be. Dolen spotted Ms. Fletcher, standing with other adults still about ten meters away from Yallia, and guided his partner toward her.

“What happened?” Kuarta repeated, her eyes still on the paramedics’ backs.

“Well, your daughter swallowed some native plants, I think.” Ms. Fletcher said.

“You
think
?”

“There were some girls, they were just playing,” Ms. Fletcher said, her voice already defensive, “and I think they stuffed some plants down her.”

“Where are they now?” Dolen barked.

“I don’t think this is the time to punish the girls, Mr. Verdafner. They  will be dealt with in—”

“I’m not going to punish them, dammit! Have you asked them what they made her eat?” Dolen’s voice carried uncharacteristic violence.

“Well, I was more worried about getting them inside,” Ms. Fletcher said, then shrank under Dolen’s withering stare.

Kuarta broke away from the woman and approached Yallia. Two of the other teachers in the area moved quickly to intercept her. “No, no, stay out of this. Let the paramedics work,” one of them said.

Kuarta shook them off. “Let me go, damn you! I just want to see!”

“Kuarta, we’ll see her at the hospital. Let them work, dear,” Dolen said softly, his hands on her shoulders. Kuarta relented. She knew he was right, and she could hear the paramedics’ muffled voices through their masks.

“She’s stable. Let’s get her up and to N.C.G.,” one of them said.

Kuarta turned to Ms. Fletcher. “They’re taking her to New Chicago General. Ask the girls who did this what they made her eat and bring the data to the hospital.” She barked the commands without rancor—there would be plenty of time for incrimination later. Now she had to secure her daughter’s life.

Kuarta and Dolen were allowed to ride in the ambulance as it screamed its way to N.C.G. Public transportation would have been agonizingly slow and there was plenty of room in the little truck. The hospital was located in almost the exact center of the Dome, along with other municipal services. This meant it was no more than two and a half kilometers from the edge of the Dome in all directions, and considerably closer to the more heavily populated sections.

Kuarta rode in the back with one of the paramedics and held Yallia’s hand. The girl was still unconscious and masked. The truck’s air scrubbers were on maximum but could still not completely erase the chlorine smell.

“What are her vitals?” Kuarta asked, craning her neck to look at the monitor.

“B.P. looks good: one-ten over sixty-four. Pulse stable at seventy-three. Respiration good,” the paramedic said.

“What about blood gas?”

The medic looked, then squinted and looked again. “Uh, blood gas is…normal?” He looked at Yallia again, then back at the monitor. “Yeah, it’s normal.”

As if on cue, Yallia opened her eyes.

“Yallia! It’s Mommy, sweetheart. I’m right here.”

“Mommy?” Yallia said, then coughed copiously.

“Yes, darling, here I am. Can you see me?”

Yallia nodded and moved her hand up to the oxygen mask.

“No, no, dear, keep that on. That’s helping you breathe. Does it hurt to breathe?”

Yallia nodded again.

The paramedic leaned in. “Yallia, My name is Marq. Does it taste funny to breathe?”

Yallia nodded.

Marq looked at Kuarta. “That’s the chlorine gas,” he said.

“No, like plastic,” Yallia said.

“What, dear?” Kuarta asked.

“It tastes like plastic, not chlorine.”

Kuarta frowned and glanced at the monitor. “You said her pulse ox is normal?”

The medic checked again. “Yes. Normal and holding. In fact, all her stats are perfect. I don’t get it,” he mused. “Yallia, honey, I want you to take a deep breath. Can you do that for me?”

Yallia nodded and breathed in, her little chest expanding. She coughed once, a short, sharp sound, but otherwise breathed normally.

“Did that hurt?” he asked.

Yallia shook her head.

“Damned if I know,” Marq mumbled. “Okay, that’s good, sweetie. Now just lie back and relax.” He looked at Kuarta quizzically. “She have any unusual blood chemistry you know of?”

“Nothing I’m aware of. Her natal work was all normal.”

Marq shrugged. “She’s looking real good now. They’ll do more detailed work at NCG. Blood gas, cellular scan, and so on.”

The rest of the ride only took five minutes, and Kuarta spent it looking at her daughter and watching the monitor. When they arrived at the hospital, Yallia was rushed to the total exam room where she was placed in the Complete Body Scanner. Kuarta herself had helped design the device—a short tunnel that combined all the possible passive and active scans and lab services a doctor could want. It was fully automated and very quick, gave a detailed analysis of the scans it performed, and otherwise acted as an invaluable diagnostic tool. Doctors still verified the results and prescribed treatment, but their role had been vastly simplified by the machinery. The machines were somewhat expensive and cranky of maintenance, and as a result, every hospital housed only two. Hospitals were always clamoring for more CB units, but they knew full well that no Dome would get another scanner until all did. That was the price of a neosocialist society, but it also meant no colonist would be denied medical care because a more influential citizen took precedence. Even with the obviously prejudicial environment that placed shippies at the bottom of a supposedly nonexistent social ladder, the medical community was still almost entirely egalitarian.

Yallia came out of the scanner a scant ten minutes after being put in, and Kuarta crowded near the read-out screen that was normally reserved for doctors. Her standing in the medical community gave her access others might not have had. When the numbers flashed on the screen, the emergency doctor furrowed his brow and said, “You’re sure she ingested chlorine?”

Kuarta could not answer for a moment. The blood work and tissue samples showed no sign of chlorine at all.

“Mommy, can I get up now?” Yallia asked from the exam table.

Kuarta ignored her. Dolen put his hands on his partner’s shoulders again, seeing the numbers but not understanding their significance. “What is it?”

“There’s no chlorine in her,” the emergency doctor said.

“Could the scanner be wrong?” Dolen asked.

“No. Not like this,” Kuarta said decisively.

“We’ve had no problems with it,” the doctor confirmed.

“Then why—” Dolen began, but Kuarta interrupted him.

“It was chlorine,” she said to herself out loud. “We all smelled it. Has the school called yet?” she asked the doctor.

“Yes. A Ms. Fletcher called it in, and a sample of the material is on its way. We’ll know more then. Right now, let’s get her to a bed while we wait.”

Kuarta, Dolen, and Yallia were escorted to a room in the emergency ward. When they were alone, Kuarta asked her daughter, “Tell me what happened, dear. Did you eat anything?”

Yallia started to tear up again as she remembered the incident. “She—she made me, Mommy! She said she wanted to be fuh-friends, but when I gave her a hug, she—she put it in my mouth!”

Kuarta hugged her close and patted her hair. “Shhh, shhh. That’s okay, dear. Now, what did she put in your mouth?”

“Dirt and stuff. Worms,” came the muffled answer.

Dolen tried to make light of the experience. “Ewww! Worms, huh? I’ll bet they tasted really bad.”

“Uh-huh. In the beginning.”

“What do you mean, dear?” Kuarta stopped the hug and looked at her daughter’s tear-streaked face.

“After a while it didn’t taste too bad. It tasted like…that stupid oatmeal Daddy makes.” Yallia managed a weak smile at her father.

Dolen thought for a moment, then said, “Irish oatmeal? The kind I cook on the stove and make with water?”

Yallia nodded and wrinkled her nose.

“But that doesn’t taste like anything, dear.”

“I know,” Yallia said.

Dolen and Kuarta looked at each other, confused. Kuarta spread her hands slightly in an “I-don’t-know-either” gesture, then held Yallia again. The three sat in silence for a few minutes until the emergency doctor came into their room. “Hi there,” he said with too much enthusiasm. “How are you feeling, soldier?”

“Okay. Sort of tired,” Yallia said.

“Not hurting?”

“Nope.”

“Great. I’m going to talk to your mommy now,” he said, silently signaling Kuarta with his eyes, “and then we’ll be right back.” He held the door open for Kuarta and followed her out.

“We’ve analyzed the stuff she ate,” he said when the door had closed behind him. “Lots of animal matter, soil, microorganisms, you name it. Really bad.”

Kuarta took a deep breath. “So what do we do?”

“Well, that’s the thing. All the scans show that she’s fine. Not a trace of chlorine in her system.”

Kuarta thought. “She couldn’t have vomited it all up. Some of it got into her. It had to. Her stomach acids must have broken down the chlorine and made chlorine gas. She should be in bad shape.”

“Right. And not just from the chlorine. The microorganisms in the soil and the biomatter should be fighting with her immune system—she had panimmunity, right?” It was almost an unnecessary question, as all colonists received the vaccine at birth.

“Of course.”

“But still, that much native biomatter should really be hitting her hard. I have to admit, Doctor Verdafner, I’m baffled.”

“Maybe she didn’t really eat any,” Dolen said weakly.

Kuarta shook her head slowly. “I think she’s telling the truth.”

“The scan did show a small amount of soil in her stomach, and she did throw up recently,” the doctor added.

Kuarta nodded absently. She, too, was bringing her considerable medical knowledge to bear on the situation and was coming up short.

“We should keep her here for tests, but….” The doctor shrugged.

“You’re not sure why,” Kuarta finished his thought for him. She thought for a few more seconds, than turned to the doctor. She seemed to see him for the first time—a vaguely Slavic man, an argie, with a youthful face and what appeared to be perpetual stubble on his chin. She liked him somehow—perhaps it was his unabashedly earnest approach to her daughter’s case. She felt the urge to agree with him and keep Yallia here for more observation, but something felt wrong. Perhaps it was the conversation she had had with Dolen earlier, perhaps it was her suspicious Halfner personality, or more likely a combination of both, that made her say, “Well, I guess we’ll take her home. Thanks for everything, Doctor…?”

“Wajanowitz.”

“Thank you. I would like to invoke my privacy rights, though. No offense,” she said.

“Oh, none at all, Doctor. I understand.” By invoking the Right to Medical Privacy, Doctor Wajanowitz could not submit any of the particulars of Yallia’s identity to anyone, including the medical database. He could, of course, submit a case study in such a way as to preserve the anonymity of the subject by withholding data that was not pertinent (in this case, that would most likely include gender, physical description, and certainly name), but such a study would be restricted to medical research purposes. It was a minor hindrance to research, one which Kuarta herself had run up against many times in her own work, but was essential to preserving the society at large. Genetic and medical prejudice in the social realm could easily wreck a colony such as theirs if measures were not taken to preserve medical and genetic privacy.