Dream Called Time (8 page)

“I will endure what I must. I am Hsktskt.” He swept his arm in a dismissive gesture.

“You’re a hybrid,” I corrected, “and not a very well-built one at that.” I turned my attention back to the holoimage of his internal organs, and noticed his Jorenian spleen was taking up more space than it should. “What caused the enlargement here?”

“An immune system response to the presence of his Jorenian augmentations,” ChoVa said. “Reinstituting regular doses of antirejection drugs has stabilized it.”

I punched up specific scans of the spleen and studied the data, which knotted my stomach. Not taking the meds, even for the short time that his regime had been interrupted, had resulted in a significant amount of damage. It couldn’t be reversed and made him more vulnerable to infection. “What other organs and vessels were compromised?”

“Infection has scarred his lungs and cardiac organs.” She magnified the affected areas to show me the damage. “He has also suffered several seizures, both from exposure to the plague of memory and from immune-response enzymatic spikes.”

“I’ll need to see all the medical records on him, complete or not, and a full list of the drugs you’ve administered before we decide what direction to take.” I thought for a moment. “We should draw his blood and see if we can synthesize more. I want enough for at least three complete transfusions.”

“Surgery is not practical,” ChoVa said. “His body is too dependent on the augmentations.”

“No, we can’t cut them out of him,” I agreed. “However, that’s not the only option. Have you run a complete microcellular series?”

“Yes, but the results indicate the alterformation was not entirely induced by standard viral methods.” She sounded frustrated now. “We cannot discern what SrrokVar did to accomplish the genomeld.”

“We will.” That monster wasn’t getting the better of me again, not from the grave.

“I do not understand what any of this means,” PyrsVar complained.

“It means you must be quiet and do as you are told,” ChoVa snapped. “Or we will make errors in your treatment, and you will die.”

“All things die.” He folded his arms. “Are you so easily distracted?”

“I’ll explain this to you later,” I promised him before ChoVa could reply. “Right now you do need to let us work.” I stood. “Healer Apalea, I’d like to admit PyrsVar to your HouseClan medical facility for a preliminary workup. We’ll also need access to a genetics lab and some staff to assist. Would the Adan be willing to accommodate all that?”

She made a reassuring gesture. “The Ruling Council has indicated that you are to have whatever you deem necessary. I will personally supervise the resource management and act as official liaison.”

“The Hanar will wish to be consulted about this,” one of the delegates predicted.

“I’ll deal with TssVar personally,” I told him, enjoying the way his eyes bulged. I turned back to Apalea. “I’d like to work with a team of doctors and nurses who have experience in treating genetically compromised patients. ChoVa, I hope you’re not planning to return to Vtaga anytime soon, because I need your knowledge and experience on this case.”

She inclined her head. “I will be happy to stay and provide whatever assistance you require, Namesake.”

“She would not go even if you asked her to,” PyrsVar said. “She enjoys watching me suffer.”

“Not as often as I wish,” ChoVa muttered.

The Hsktskt rarely joked about anything, but I didn’t think they were serious. In fact I was picking up something else from both of them, in the way they looked at each other and the distinct lack of viciousness behind their cold words. It wasn’t friendship; I could see that they weren’t good buddies. Then I understood. Somehow the daughter of the supreme ruler over the Hsktskt Faction and a renegade male trapped in the body of a warm-blooded offworlder had developed feelings for each other.

These two were in love.

I turned to Apalea. “Before we do anything, I need to contact the Hanar on Vtaga.”

An hour later I sat down in front of an interplanetary-communications array. I didn’t recognize half the console controls or the design of the unit. “This looks like something I could seriously damage.”

“Establishing interplanetary relay channels requires rather more than a standard com unit provides,” Apalo told me as he bent over to adjust something. When I reached for one of the keypads, he caught my hand. “I have preset all the controls, Healer. It is best that you not touch the console while you are signaling Vtaga—unless you wish to damage it.”

“Sorry.” I put my hand in my lap.

Apalo smiled a little as he indicated the display. “Speak clearly and directly to the monitor, like so.” He ducked his head and pressed a key. “Centuron KssetaVa, Healer Torin is ready to commence her relay.”

“Acknowledged,” a Hsktskt voice growled over the audio. “Now transferring relay over to the secured channel.”

“When you are ready to speak, press this switch.” After showing me which one, Apalo straightened. “And should you need assistance, Healer, I will be waiting outside in the corridor.”

I glanced at the switch as my stomach clenched. “Thanks for your help.”

The communications officer withdrew, which left me alone with the beast. I pressed the switch and watched the face of my old enemy coalesce on the screen.

Seeing him made me idly wonder just how many strange and exotic patients I had treated in the years since I’d left Terra. TssVar—or, more precisely, his mate and their young—had been among my first.

My charge nurse’s four eyes rolled wildly toward me, and I saw why she had choked out her report—the business end of a pulse rifle was pressed tightly against her larynx. Terror had mottled her smooth vermilion hide with dark splotches.

On the other end of the weapon was a monster. A big, ugly green monster.

It was a sextipedal, reptilian being with a number of minor contusions on its head and upper limbs. Close to ten feet tall and weighing over four hundred kilos, it towered over T’Nliqinara. An unfamiliar metallic uniform covered a brutal frame thick with broad ropes of muscle. Whatever it was, it meant business.

As TssVar did now, judging by the look in his glaring yellow eyes. The former OverLord spoke in his native language, a series of clicks, grunts, and hisses that the ship’s translator muted as it translated it into Terran for me.

Reptilians generally didn’t age in the same way humanoid species did, and the years had left little mark on the former OverLord’s brutal features. The only way I knew he was five years older was the subtle darkening of his scale patterns.

“SsurreVa.”

“TssVar.” I didn’t know how a measly warm-blood was supposed to address the supreme ruler of the Hsktskt Faction, so I didn’t even try. “How have you been?”

“I have enjoyed better decades.” He took a moment to study me. “So, it seems, have you.”

He looked tired, I thought, feeling a little sorry for him. The former OverLord had never been especially fond of politics, and now he was permanently swamped in them.

“It’s not been all bad,” I lied. “I didn’t have a plague make me into a supreme ruler overnight. I just took a nap for five years.”

“It was never my wish to rule,” he informed me. “The surviving elected me to the throne.”

“Being possessed by an alien persona wasn’t on my to-do list, either.” I had learned to read some Hsktskt body language when TssVar had enslaved me, and the set of his facial muscles was saying he was unhappy as well as tired. “Are you planning to stay with it, or give it up?”

One of his huge yellow eyes rolled upward while the other glared at me. “One does not ‘give up’ supreme rule, SsurreVa.”

I considered that. “Who would yell at you if you did?”

TssVar’s species couldn’t smile, but he flashed me a couple rows of teeth in an approximation of the expression. “Now I remember why I have missed you.”

“Same here.” He seemed surprised by that, and I added, “It may shock you, especially after all we’ve been through, but I do consider you one of my oldest friends.”

“Since I regard you as the same,” he said, “it does not.”

We sat together in a comfortable silence until some underlings appeared behind him, evidently to check on him. As I watched them grovel, I wondered how I was going to tell him that his daughter had fallen in love with a rogue hybrid. Maybe he already knew. Maybe he didn’t, and PyrsVar would have his Jorenian organs removed in a less civilized fashion.

TssVar dismissed the talon kissers before he spoke to me again. “It would seem my courtiers grow impatient. You have examined the crossbreed?”

“I’ve looked at him in a meeting room,” I corrected. “I’ll do an examination once he’s in the hospital. Fortunately HouseClan Adan has agreed to let me use theirs.”

“The Jorenians have been very accommodating, but they like this situation no better than I.” He propped his taloned hands against the edge of his console. “Do you believe that the rogue can be restored to what he was?”

There was some hope in his voice.
So he doesn’t want him dead—at least, not yet.
“I think I’m going to have to run a lot of tests on him before I answer that question.”

He blew some air through his nostrils. “One can never obtain a reasonable response from you healers.”

“Having one in the family now, you should know.” I felt as if I were walking through a field of invisible proximity-triggered explosives. “Since your daughter has been the lead physician on this case, I’ve asked her to stay and work with me. Is that going to create a problem?”

He eyed me. “She has a security detachment. I trained them myself.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“I know what you say and do not say.” He seemed to be mulling it over. “I suppose I cannot persuade you to end this rogue’s life during the course of his treatment.”

“No more than the colonists on K-2 could talk me into killing you and your mate before I delivered your kids,” I agreed. “Nor would I take kindly to you ordering one of your entourage to arrange a helpful accident or discreet assassination for my patient.”

“You seem to forget, your patient wears the hide of your dead mate,” he grated.

“Not by his choice,” I reminded him, “or mine. Look, I know PyrsVar is not a sterling example of your species. Every time he opens his mouth,
I
want to thump him. But he’s the victim here, TssVar. The way SrrokVar used him—the sick things he did to him—were beyond reprehensible.”

The Hanar didn’t say anything.

I decided to push a little more. “All he wants is what was taken from him: a normal life. He’s willing to die for that. I think he deserves a second chance.”

“I am not concerned with him.” He swept his hand to one side. “It is ChoVa. If anything untoward happened to the crossbreed, she would never forgive me.”

“Neither would I,” I mentioned.

“Someday, when your child attains mating age,” he growled, “I will have this conversation with you again.”

After I promised to send him regular updates on our progress and accepted his not so fond farewell, I terminated the relay. I had promised after signaling TssVar to meet everyone at the medical facility, but I needed a break from all the unrequited Hsktskt hormones and some time to think.

Apalo escorted me to the guest quarters the Adan had arranged for me at the pavilion, and after signaling Apalea and letting her know I would be another hour or so, I went to change into some fresh garments. That was when I found a disc that had been tucked into the clothing I had packed.

It was unmarked, so I carried it over to the room terminal and placed it in the reader. Instead of the medical text I was expecting to see, the feed from a surveillance drone popped onto the screen.

The drone had been recording in darkness, so the scene on the monitor was displayed in the reds, oranges, and blues of thermal signatures. Even with the fine detailing, it took me a moment to recognize the field of yiborra grass, one that had been cultivated near the Torin pavilion.

A small figure stood alone in the center of the field, and as the drone drew closer and took a stationary position on the closed bloom of a d’narral flower, I took in the waist high grass, the outline of the nose, and the long hair. The woman in the vid, who stood there looking up at the stars, was me.

I frowned.
When did I do this?
I heard grass thrashing, and saw a taller figure come up behind me on the screen.

“When Kao Torin died, a part of Cherijo died with him,” I heard Reever say over the terminal speaker. He stopped next to my figure. “That did not happen to me when she died.”

The female figure turned to look behind them. “Marel is alone,” she said in my voice, but in a form of Terran that was so slurred and garbled I almost didn’t understand her. “We should go back.”

My jaw dropped into my lap. This wasn’t me and Reever standing in a pasture. This was my body and Reever.

This was
Jarn
and Reever.

“Fasala was happy to come and stay with our daughter for a few hours.” Reever put his arm around her. “You dislike it when I speak of Cherijo’s first love.”

“He is dead,” Jarn said in her awful Terran. “We do not speak of the dead on Akkabarr.”

“No,” I told the terminal, “you just steal other women’s bodies and husbands and children.”

“Indulge me this once.” Reever began petting her hair, the way he had so often done with mine. “Do you know why Cherijo’s death did not affect me as Kao’s passing did her?”

“Let me guess,” I snapped over whatever Jarn replied. “Having sex with my possessed body kept you from weeping yourself to sleep every night.”

He turned her around to face him. “I became Cherijo’s lover, and eventually her husband, so that I might take Kao’s place in her heart, as I promised him that I would. But I could not.”

That jolted me a second time. He’d promised
Kao
that he’d marry me? When had that happened? Then I froze as I remembered that, just before his death, Kao had made Reever his Speaker.

“She was an idiot to refuse your love,” Jarn said.

“I never refused anything!” I shouted at the terminal.