Healer lf-3 Read online

Dalt grinned and pushed through the door to Clark-son's office, with Barre trailing behind. A huge, graying man leaped from behind a desk and stalked forward at a precarious angle.

  "Dalt! Where the hell have you been? You were supposed to go down, take a look, and then come back up. You could have done the procedure three times in the period you took. And what happened to your head?" Clarkson's speech was in its usual rapidfire form.

  "Well, this—"

  "Never mind that now! What's the story? I can tell right now that you didn't find anything, because Barre is with you. If you'd found the brain he'd be off in some corner now nursing it like a misplaced infant! Well, tell me! How does it look?"

  Dalt hesitated, not quite sure whether the barrage had come to an end. "It doesn't look good," he said finally.

  "And why not?"

  "Because I couldn't find a trace of the ship itself. Oh, there's evidence of some sort of craft having been there a while back, but it must have gotten off-planet again, because there's not a trace of wreckage to be found."

  Clarkson looked puzzled. "Not even a trace?"

  "Nothing."

  The project director pondered this a moment, then shrugged. "We'll have to figure that one out later. But right now you should know that we picked up another signal from the brain's life-support system while you were off on your joyride—"

  "It wasn't a joyride," Dalt declared. A few moments with Clarkson always managed to rub his nerves raw. "I ran into a pack of unfriendly locals and had to hide in a cave."

  "Be that as it may," Clarkson said, returning to his desk chair, "we're now certain that the brain, or what's left of it, is on Kwashi."

  "Yes, but where on Kwashi? It's not exactly an asteroid, you know."

  "We've almost pinpointed its location," Barre broke in excitedly. "Very close to the site you inspected."

  "It's in Bendelema, I hope," Dalt said.

  "Why?" Clarkson asked.

  "Because when I was on cultural survey down there I posed as a soldier of fortune—a mercenary of sorts— and Duke Kile of Bendelema was a former employer. I'm known and liked in Bendelema. I'm not at all popular in Tependia because they're the ones I fought against. I repeat: It's in Bendelema, I hope."

  Clarkson nodded. "It's in Bendelema."

  "Good!" Dalt exhaled with relief. "That makes everything much simpler. I've got an identity in Bendelema: Racso the mercenary. At least that's a starting place."

  "And you'll start tomorrow," Clarkson said. "We've wasted too much time as it is. If we don't get that prototype back and start coming up with some pretty good reasons for the malfunction, Star Ways just might cancel the project. There's a lot riding on you, Dalt. Remember that."

  Dalt turned toward the door. "Who'll let me forget?" he remarked with a grim smile. "I'll check in with you before I leave."

  "Good enough," Clarkson said with a curt nod, then turned to Barre. "Hold on a minute, Barre. I want to go over a few things with you." Dalt gladly closed the door on the pair.

  "It's almost lunchtime," said a feminine voice behind him. "How about it?"

  In a single motion, Dalt spun, leaned over Jean's desk, and gave her a peck on the lips. "Sorry, can't. It may be noon to all of you on ship-time, but it's some hellish hour of the morning to me. I've got to drop in on the doc, then I've got to get some sleep."

  But Jean wasn't listening. Instead, she was staring fixedly at the bald spot on Dalt's head. "Steve!" she cried. "What happened?"

  Dalt straightened up abruptly. "Nothing much. Something landed on it while I was below and the hair fell out. It'll grow back, don't worry."

  "I'm not worried about that," she said, standing up and trying to get another look. But Dalt kept his head high. "Did it hurt?"

  "Not at all. Look, I hate to run off like this, but I've got to get some sleep. I'm going back down tomorrow."

  Her face fell. "So soon?"

  "I'm afraid so. Why don't we make it for dinner tonight. I'll drop by your room and we'll go from there. The caf isn't exactly a restaurant, but if we get there late we can probably have a table all to ourselves."

  "And after that?" she asked coyly.

  "I'll be damned if we're going to spend my last night on ship for who-knows-how-long in the vid theater!"

  Jean smiled. "I was hoping you'd say that."

  ("What odd physiological rumblings that female stirs in you!") the voice said as Dalt walked down the corridor to the medical offices. He momentarily broke stride at the sound of it. He'd almost forgotten that he had company.

  "That's none of your business!" he muttered through tight lips.

  ("I'm afraid much of what you do is my business. I'm not directly connected with you emotionally, but physically ... what you feel, I feel; what you see, I see; what you taste—")

  "Okay! Okay!"

  ("You're holding up rather well, actually. Better than I would have expected.")

  "Probably my cultural-survey training. They taught me how to keep my reactions under control when faced with an unusual situation."

  ("Glad to hear it. We may well have a long relationship ahead of us if you don't go the way of most high-order intelligences and suicidally reject me. We can look on your body as a small business and the two of us as partners.")

  "Partners!" Dalt said, somewhat louder than he wished. Luckily, the halls were deserted. "This is my body!"

  ("If it will make you happier, I'll revise my analogy: You're the founder of the company and I've just bought my way in. How's that sound, Partner?")

  "Lousy!"

  ("Get used to it,") the voice singsonged. "Why bother? You won't be in there much longer. The doc'll see to that!"

  ("He won't find a thing, Steve.") "We'll see."

  The door to the medical complex swished open when Dalt touched the operating plate and he passed into a tiny waiting room.

  "What can we do for you, Mr. Dalt?" the nurse-receptionist said. Dalt was a well-known figure about the ship by now.

  He inclined his head toward the woman and pointed to the bald spot. "I want to see the doc about this. I'm going below tomorrow and I want to get this cleared up before I do. So if the doc's got a moment, I'd like to see him."

  The nurse smiled. "Right away." At the moment, Dalt was a very important man. He was the only one on ship legally allowed on Kwashi. If he thought he needed a doctor, he'd have one.

  A man in a traditional white medical coat poked his head through one of the three doors leading from the waiting room, in answer to the nurse's buzz.

  "What is it, Lorraine?" he asked.

  "Mr. Dalt would like to see you, Doctor."

  He glanced at Dalt. "Of course. Come in, Mr. Dalt. I'm Dr. Graves." The doctor showed him into a small, book-and-microfilm-lined office. "Have a seat, will you? I'll be with you in a minute."

  Graves exited by another door and Dalt was alone ... almost.

  ("He has quite an extensive library here, doesn't he?") said the voice. Dalt glanced at the shelves and noticed printed texts that must have been holdovers from the doctor's student days and microfilm spools of the latest clinical developments. ("You would do me a great service by asking the doctor if you could borrow some of his more basic texts.")

  "What for? I thought you knew all about me."

  ("I know quite a bit now, it's true, but I'm still learning and I'll need a vocabulary to explain things to you now and then.")

  "Forget it. You're not going to be around that long."

  Dr. Graves entered then. "Now. What seems to be the problem, Mr. Dalt?"

  Dalt explained the incident in the cave. "Legend has it—and colonial experience seems to confirm it—that 'of every thousand struck down, nine hundred and ninety-nine will die.' I was floored by an alaret but I'm still kicking and I'd like to know why."

  ("I believe I've already explained that by luck of a random constitutional factor, your nervous system didn't reject me.")

  Shut up! Dalt mentally snarled.

  The doctor shrugged.
"I don't see the problem. You're alive and all you've got to show for your encounter is a bald spot, and even that will disappear—it's bristly already. I can't tell you why you're alive because I don't know how these alarets kill their victims. As far as I know, no one's done any research on them. So why don't you just forget about it and stay out of caves."

  "It's not that simple, Doc." Dalt spoke carefully. He'd have to phrase things just right; if he came right out and told the truth, he'd sound like a flaming schiz. "I have this feeling that something seeped into my scalp, maybe even into my head. I feel this thickness there." Dalt noticed the slightest narrowing of the doctor's gaze. "I'm not crazy," he said hurriedly. "You've got to admit that the alaret did something up there—the bald spot proves it. Couldn't you make a few tests or something? Just to ease my mind."

  The doctor nodded. He was satisfied that Dalt's fears had sufficient basis in reality, and the section-eight gleam left his eyes. He led Dalt into the adjoining room and placed a cubical helmetlike apparatus over his head. A click, a buzz, and the helmet was removed. Dr. Graves pulled out two small transparencies and shoved them into a viewer. The screen came to life with two views of the inside of Dalt's skull: a lateral and an anterior-posterior.

  "Nothing to worry about," he said after a moment of study. "I scanned you for your own peace of mind. Take a look."

  Dalt looked, even though he didn't know what he was looking for.

  ("I told you so,") said the voice. ("I'm thoroughly integrated with your nervous system.")

  "Well, thanks for your trouble, Doc. I guess I've really got nothing to worry about," Dalt lied.

  "Nothing at all. Just consider yourself lucky to be alive if those alarets are as deadly as you say."

  ("Ask him for the books!") the voice said.

  I'm going to sleep as soon as I leave here. You won't get a chance to read them.

  ("You let me worry about that. Just get the books for me.")

  Why should I do you any favors?

  ("Because I'll see to it that you have one difficult time of getting to sleep. I'll keep repeating 'get the books, get the books, get the books' until you finally do it.")

  I believe you would!

  ("You can count on it.")

  "Doc," Dalt said, "would you mind lending me a few of your books?"

  "Like what?"

  "Oh, anatomy and physiology, to start."

  Dr. Graves walked into the other room and took two large, frayed volumes from the shelves. "What do you want 'em for?"

  "Nothing much," Dalt said, taking the books and tucking them under his arm. "Just want to look up a few things."

  "Well, just don't forget where you got them. And don't let that incident with the alaret become an obsession with you," the doc said meaningfully.

  Dalt smiled. "I've already banished it from my mind."

  ("That's a laugh!")

  Dalt wasted no time in reaching his quarters after leaving the medical offices. He was on the bed before the door could slide back into the closed position. Putting the medical books on the night table, he buried his face in the pillow and immediately dropped off to sleep.

  He awoke five hours later, feeling completely refreshed except for his eyes. They felt hot, burning.

  ("You may return those books anytime you wish,") the voice said.

  "Lost interest already?" Dalt yawned, stretching as he lay on the bed.

  ("In a way, yes. I read them while you were asleep.")

  "How the hell did you do that?"

  ("Quite simple, really. While your mind was sleeping, I used your eyes and your hands to read. I digested the information and stored it away in your brain. By the way, there's an awful lot of wasted space in the human brain. You're not living up to anywhere near your potential, Steve. Neither is any other member of your race, I gather.")

  "What right have you got to pull something like that with my body?" Dalt said angrily. He sat up and rubbed his eyes.

  ("Our body, you mean.")

  Dalt ignored that. "No wonder my eyes are burning! I've been reading when I could have been—should have been—sleeping!"

  ("Don't get excited. You got your sleep and I built up my vocabulary. You're fully rested, so what's your complaint? By the way, I can now tell you how I entered your head. I seeped into your pores and then into your scalp capillaries, which I followed into your parietal emissary veins. These flow through the parietal foramina in your skull and empty into the superior sagittal sinus. From there it was easy to infiltrate your central nervous system.")

  Dalt opened his mouth to say that he really didn't care, when he realized that he understood exactly what the voice was saying. He had a clear picture of the described path floating through his mind.

  "How come I know what you're talking about? I seem to understand but I don't remember ever hearing those terms before ... and then again, I do. It's weird."

  ("It must seem rather odd,") the voice concurred. ("What has happened is that I've made my new knowledge available to you. The result is you experience the fruits of the learning process without having gone through it. You know facts without remembering having learned them.")

  "Well," Dalt said, rising to his feet, "at least you're not a complete parasite."

  ("I resent that! We're partners ... a symbiosis!")

  "I suppose you may come in handy now and then." Dalt sighed.

  ("I already have.")

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  ("I found a small neoplasm in your lung—middle lobe on the right. It might well have become malignant.")

  "Then let's get back to the doc before it metastatizes!" Dalt said, and idly realized that a few hours ago he would have been worrying about "spread" rather than "metastasis."

  ("There's no need to worry, Steve. I killed it off.")

  "How'd you do that?"

  ("I just worked through your vascular system and selectively cut off the blood supply to that particular group of cells."

  "Well, thanks, Partner."

  ("No thanks necessary, I assure you. I did it for my own good as well as yours—I don't relish the idea of walking around in a cancer-ridden body any more than you do!")

  Dalt removed his serf clothing in silence. The enormity of what had happened in that cave on Kwashi struck him now with full force. He had a built-in medical watchdog who would keep everything running smoothly. He smiled grimly as he donned ship clothes and suspended from his neck the glowing prismatic gem that he had first worn as Racso and had continued to wear after his cultural-survey assignment on Kwashi had been terminated. He'd have his health but he'd lost his privacy forever. He wondered if it was worth it.

  ("One other thing, Steve,") said the voice. ("I've accelerated the growth of your hair in the bald spot to maximum.")

  Dalt put up a hand and felt a thick fuzz where before there had been only bare scalp. "Hey! You're right! It's really coming in!" He went to the mirror to take a look. "Oh, no!"

  ("Sorry about that, Steve. I couldn't see it so I wasn't aware there had been a color change. I'm afraid there's nothing I can do about that.")

  Dalt stared in dismay at the patch of silvery gray in the center of his otherwise inky hair. "I look like a freak!"

  ("You can always dye it.") Dalt made a disgusted noise.

  ("I have a few questions, Steve,") the voice said in a hasty attempt to change the subject "What about?"

  ("About why you're going down to that planet tomorrow.")

  "I'm going because I was once a member of the Federation cultural-survey team on Kwashi and because the Star Ways Corporation lost an experimental pilot brain down there. They got permission from the Federation to retrieve the brain only on the condition that a cultural-survey man does the actual retrieving."

  ("That's not what I meant. I want to know what's so important about the brain, just how much of the brain it actually is, and so on.")

  "There's an easy way to find out," Dalt said, heading for the door. "We'll just go to the ship's libra
ry."

  The library was near the hub of the ship and completely computer-operated. Dalt closed himself away in one of the tiny viewer booths and pushed his ID card into the awaiting slot.

  The flat, dull tones of the computer's voice came from a hidden speaker.

  "What do you wish, Mr. Dalt?"

  "I might as well go the route: Let me see everything on the brain project."

  Four microspools slid down a tiny chute and landed in the receptacle in front of Dalt. "I'm sorry, Mr. Dalt," said the computer, "but this is all your present status allows you to see."

  ("That should be enough, Steve. Feed them into the viewer.")

  The story that unraveled from the spools was one of biologic and economic daring. Star Ways was fast achieving what amounted to a monopoly of the interstellar-warp-unit market and from there was expanding to peri-stellar drive. But unlike the typical established corporation, SW was pouring money into basic research. One of the prime areas of research was the development of a use for cultured human neural tissue. And James Barre had found a use that held great economic potential.

  The prime expense of interstellar commercial travel, whether freight or passenger, was the crew. Good spacers were a select lot and hard to come by; running a ship took a lot of them. There had been many attempts to replace crews with computers but these had invariably failed due either to mass/volume problems or overwhelming maintenance costs. Barre's development of an "artificial" brain—by that he meant structured in vitro—seemed to hold an answer, at least for cargo ships.

  After much trial and error with life-support systems and control linkages, a working prototype had finally been developed. A few short hops had been tried with a full crew standing by, and the results had been more than anyone had hoped for. So the prototype was prepared for a long interstellar journey with five scheduled stops—with cargo holds empty, of course. The run had gone quite well until the ship got into the Kwashi area. A single technician had been sent along to insure that nothing went too far awry, and, according to his story, he was sitting in his quarters when the ship suddenly came out of warp with the emergency/abandon ship signals blaring. He wasted no time in getting to a lifeboat and ejecting. The ship made a beeline for Kwashi and disappeared, presumably in a crash. That had been eight months ago.