Plague of Memory (38 page)

I approached the berth, hating myself more than at any other moment since my husband had been injured. "Marel."

"Daddy won't die," she said. "He promised me he wouldn't leave me anymore." She leaned in over her father's face. "Wake up now, Daddy. Mama doesn't know you're just sleeping. Please wake up."

"He can't, Marel," I said, putting my arms around her. "He would come back to us if he could, but his body is too badly injured."

Her eyes turned from green to gray as she glared at me. "You fixed him. CaurVar said you did. At the bad man's place. You operated on Daddy."

"I did." I felt the crushing weight of my failure. "I have tried everything I know to repair his wounds, but it is not enough. I can't heal him."

"You don't have to, Mama." My daughter reached down and jerked one of the tubes out of her father's chest before I could stop her. "He's not going to die anymore." She struggled wildly as I lifted her away. "Daddy, please, you have to wake up
now."

Marel managed to squirm out of my hold and ran away from me to the other side of Duncan's berth. She dislodged one of the power supply units and

368 S. L. Vlehl

the heart-lung machine keeping my husband aliv ceased operating.

I shouted for the nurses as I went to enable backup power system, leaning over Duncan reach the berth console. That was when I heard \ choking sound, and looked down.

"Duncan?" I whispered. A long-fingered, scarred hand reached up touched my wet cheek before it fell back.

"Duncan."

My hands shook as I removed his breathing tub and clenched as he took a ragged, voluntary breat By then the nurses were beside me. I pressed fingers to his throat, and felt a slow, sluggish pul: beat where none should have been. "Daevena yep It cannot be."

Duncan's eyelids open to slits, and his lips moved. I bent down to hear the faintest whisper of my name before the crowds in the street below began shouting.

"I need transport," I said, ripping off my funeral robe and handing it to one of the nurses. "Where is ChoVa?"

The female Hsktskt stood behind us. "I've already signaled for medevac." She nodded toward a scout ship docking just outside the chamber balcony. "Surgery is standing by."

Marel climbed onto the berth and cuddled next to her father. "I told you, Mama," she said, smiling at me. "He was just asleep."

At the medical facility, which seemed empty now that all of its dust-crazed patients had been re
leased, ChoVa, Squilyp, and I placed my husband in a critical-care unit and examined him for the next two hours. Duncan came in and out of consciousness, and only spoke a few words, but they were coherent.

"His vitals are very low," ChoVa said after we had finished a complete imaging scan of Duncan's torso, "but the damaged organs appear to be functioning as normal. I think he will live."

Squilyp turned to me. "What did you do to him?" "Nothing." I shook my head, completely bewildered.

ChoVa transferred the results of our scans onto the screens at the nurses' station. The three of us left my husband with his Jorenian and Hsktskt nurses to view the results.

"The sword cut his liver and heart in two," I said as I pulled up the thoracic scan. "My surgical repairs were not enough to enable them to function as they are now. How can this be happening?"

"Your repairs have vanished." ChoVa stepped forward and pointed to the areas where I had operated. "There is no scar tissue present in either organ. No lascalpel marks. Nothing."

I stared at the scans until I thought my eyes would go blind. "I scanned him myself. He was ... " Duncan's memories of being stabbed, and the surgery I and my father performed on him, came back to me. "The chameleon hypercells Joseph Grey Veil put inside Reever. They have to be responsible for this."

"They did repair the kidney damage, but they degraded quickly and disappeared more than a year
ago." Squilyp retrieved the hematology report and results from the tissue scans. "The test results show abnormal cells permeating the heart and liver, the same way the hypercells were present in his kidney when you returned from Terra. Which is unlikely, if not impossible."

"They must have been dormant somewhere in his body," I murmured, glancing back at the critical-care unit. "Perhaps the damage to the organs triggered them." I recalled something Cherijo had once said to Reever about her ability to heal. "Or they have altered his immune system to be like mine."

"I do not understand," ChoVa said. "What is this chameleon? How can cells that have died show up in a patient's body again? An immune system that repairs organ damage this severe?"

Squilyp began telling her about his observations of the hypercells in my husband's kidney, but I slipped away and went back to the critical-care berth.

Reever opened his eyes while I scanned him again, just to be sure nothing was failing. "You look beautiful, beloved."

"So do you, Husband." The internal damage from the sword had vanished, and I detected no residual brain damage. "How do you feel?"

"Disoriented. I couldn't see you, but I could feel some things. I heard your voice, and Marel's." His gaze never left my face. "Is she all right?"

"She will be now." I threw aside the scanner and took his hand in mine. "You've ruined the Jorenians' party, you know. As well as the Hanar's."

"Have I?"

PLAGUE OF MEMORY 371

"There were going to be ten thousand people here to watch your funeral pyre burn tomorrow. Then we were to go to the ship and celebrate in some Jorenian fashion." I smiled through my tears. "We'll have to tell everyone to go home now."

He smiled a little. "Send my regrets."

The Stardoc Novels

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The White Council of Wizards has drafted Harry Dresden as a Warden and assigned him to look into rumors of black magic in Chicago. Malevolent entities that feed on fear are loose in the Windy City, but it's all in a day's work for a wizard, his faithful dog, and a talking skull named Bob...

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