Crystal Healer (5 page)

"I must agree. And when Cherijo disappeared during the Jado Massacre, Xonea's path changed again," Xonal said. "Upon his return to Joren, my ClanSon distanced himself from us. He rarely ate or slept, and he spent many weeks in solitude." He glanced at me. "That is not our way, Jarn. We Jorenians share everything with our kin, even the worst of our sorrows. But Xonea lost all interest in family and work and life. If Reever had not convinced him that Cherijo yet lived, I think my ClanSon would have abandoned his path altogether and embraced the stars. Now that you are found, well, perhaps you understand why he behaves as he does."

I nodded. "Xonea will make sure that I never leave Joren again."

"Just so. But do not imagine that his ClanMother and I support his actions against you and Duncan. We believe that our ClanSon is wrong in what he does." The ClanLeader touched the petals of a pale yellow flower blooming on a vine curled around the statue's base. "Were I to pluck this lovely thing from its place and keep it cradled in my hands, it would be safe. I would ensure that nothing would ever harm it. Yet in time it would still wither and die. It was not meant to be mine." He gazed at me. "As Cherijo--as
you
--were never meant to be Xonea's."

I felt some of the weight of worry ease inside me. "What can I do, ClanLeader?"

"My ClanSon knows well our modern laws, but has somewhat neglected studying our most ancient." He took the scroll case from his hip and handed it to me. "This ruling, in particular, may be of some value to you."

"I will not know what it says," I advised him. "I cannot read Jorenian."

"The scroll contains the full text of a ruling from the days before the HouseClans united," he said, smiling at me. "It concerns the rights of an injured Torin warrior who was saved by a Varena healer."

After leaving Marel at the Jorenian day school she now attended with Fasala and the other Torin children, Reever and I went to the HouseClan's main medical facility. I looked back several times, wondering how quickly I might resolve the conflict with Xonea and return.

"Stop worrying about her," my husband said as he drove away. "Marel has many friends at school, and she enjoys her lessons. All of the instructors are Torin, so if anyone threatens her--"

"Her teacher will eviscerate them with her bare hands, I know." I gave him an exasperated look. "My concern is not about her safety."

"Then what is?"

I couldn't say that every time I looked upon our child, I wondered if it might be the last. "Do you think this bounty being offered for us is another trick by your friend to lure us away from Joren?"

"No. While you were gone this morning, I signaled some contacts I have." Reever's tone grew grim. "It would seem that my
friend
has taken his tricks and left the quadrant."

"Then what he told us is true. There is someone else hunting us."

My husband nodded. "So it would seem. Whoever is offering the bounty has taken extraordinary measures to protect their identity; the Thekka used to send that transmission was found dead shortly afterward."

"Dead?" I was astonished. "Murdered?"

"No, he was found to have died of natural causes," Reever said. "That is all my contacts have been able to discover."

The lack of information frustrated me. Also, the death of the Thekka sounded suspicious; as a doctor I knew of a hundred different ways to kill someone and conceal the fact that they were murdered.
A doctor.
"Could it be Cherijo's creator who searches for us?"

"No. Cherijo and I both saw Joseph Grey Veil die on Terra." He hesitated, then added, "Jarn, if we remain on Joren, mercenaries will come for us. It is possible that they will even join forces and attempt an invasion."

The thought of Joren being attacked--and the HouseClans' inevitable response--made me feel sick. "How can you know that?"

He glanced at me. "It is what I did to take Cherijo from the League."

All of his memories of that time came rushing back into my head, making it ache slightly. "Then perhaps we had better make some travel arrangements, before you are forced to do the same for me."

Reever stopped the glidecar outside the main entrance to the medical facility. When I moved to climb out, he stopped me. "If we do not give Xonea what he wants, he
will
find a lawful reason to attack Trellus. I know you're sympathetic, but we cannot sacrifice all those innocent people merely to protect the one responsible from your ClanBrother's vengeance."

"If it becomes a choice between him and the colonists, I will tell Xonea everything he wants to know," I promised him. "But I think I can put a stop to all of this today."

Just inside the entrance, the Torin's Senior Healer, a tall, dark-eyed Omorr male in a modified white and blue doctor's tunic, hopped back and forth on his one leg. The white prehensile gildrells covering the lower half of his dark pink face were writhing, indicating he was agitated. As soon as he saw us, his living beard twisted into bunched knots.

Xonea must be already here
, I thought. "Good morning, Senior Healer."

"Would that I could say the same, Jarn." He used one of his three upper limbs to gesture toward the administrative area on the north side of the facility. "Captain Torin has commandeered my offices and is even now searching through our database records. He also plans to interrogate me and the staff of the post-op ward. Apparently, he believes that you knew that the explosive planted in the belly of your last surgical patient was put there to kill you, not her."

Xonea had been busy. "He said as much to me yesterday." At least my ClanBrother had not taken a different approach, or what I had planned might not work. "Come. Reever will go and keep him from making a mess of things while you and I make rounds."

"Rounds?" Squilyp echoed at the same time Duncan said, "I will what?"

I regarded both of them. "Duncan, you would do better away from the patients in recovery; the smell of blood always makes you feel nauseated. Watch Xonea, but allow him to find whatever he can. It will make him feel better to know he was right." I turned to my friend the Omorr. "You have some objection to my performing rounds with you?"

"While we allow your ClanBrother to collect enough evidence to lawfully declare ClanKill on someone's world or species?" he snapped. "Why no, not at all. What are the lives of a few million helpless beings in comparison to the twenty I have up on the ward?"

"Squilyp," I said, hanging on to my patience, "Xonea will do nothing, I promise. Now, I have been marooned for weeks on a dome colony with no hospital and no doctors. When someone wasn't trying to kill me, they were making me operate with amalgam blades on patients in airlocks. Not to mention what the giant slime-covered worm did to me and Reever."

Squilyp's dark eyes widened. "Giant?
Slime
-covered? What--"

"So now that we have returned to civilization," I said, ruthlessly interrupting him, "I would like to put these unhappy experiences behind me and do the work that I was trained for in the proper environment. That is, if you have no obj ections, or believe, as Xonea does, that I am too mentally unbalanced to make decisions without assistance."

"Why would he think . . . ?" The Omorr pressed one appendage end over his eyes, rubbing at them with the webbed membranes that served in place of more humanoid fingers. "No. Don't tell me. I do not wish to know. We will make rounds." He eyed my husband. "And you--you will not get in Xonea's way or send anyone to the trauma center, is that clear?"

Reever said something in Omorr that my vocollar would not translate, and walked away.

On the surgical ward, I reviewed each chart of the post-op patients while Squilyp checked their vitals, performed routine scans, and otherwise behaved himself. We spent the most time with one patient, an older Jorenian male who had sustained multiple internal injuries when the loading platform where he been working had collapsed, dumping nearly a ton of cargo containers on top of him.

"The organ repairs and bone grafts you performed appear to be healing, but his lung capacity remains diminished, and he sustains a fever despite the antibiotic treatments." I paged through the chart until I found the latest respiratory scan and blood work. Even given his age and the severity of his injuries, the results were not as they should have been. "You have him scheduled for an exploratory tomorrow?"

Squilyp nodded absently as he adjusted the patient's monitor leads. "I may have missed something during surgery."

I had operated alongside the Omorr often enough to know that he never missed anything. His meticulous methods and habits were perfection; he also had a peculiar, natural aptitude for sensing and finding potential troubles during procedures that weren't readily apparent. The cause of the patient's poor condition had to be from another source.

I regarded the Jorenian male, who was awake, although his eyes seemed unfocused. "Good morning, Palalo Torin. My name is Healer Jarn, and I must talk to you about your accident. I know your throat has not healed enough yet for you to speak, so I will ask questions that require only a gesture of yes or no as an answer. Can you do this for me?"

With his left hand he made a modified affirmative gesture.

"I thank you." I paged through his chart to the initial intake report. "You were unloading containers of agricultural equipment when the platform failed, is this correct?"

He repeated the affirmative.

"Did the containers break open after they fell?" Palalo made a negative gesture. "Did they leak fuel or liquids?" Another no, but this time not as definite. "Did anything come out of the containers that fell on you?" He hesitated, and then turned his hand over and spread his fingers in a gesture I did not recognize.

"He is not certain," Squilyp said. "He lost consciousness during the platform failure, and short-term memory loss associated with head trauma is not uncommon among Jorenians."

I took the Omorr's scanner and modified the settings before I passed it over the patient's chest. The resulting readings indicated elevated levels of nitrogen. I had to increase the depth of the scan twice more before the device would identify the source: trace amounts of fungi, now lodged deep inside small ruptures in the patient's lung tissue, which had become inflamed and closed over.

"You need not operate," I said to Squilyp, and handed him the scanner. "Fungus has infected his lungs, but we can clear them with a change in his medication."

"He aspirated mold?"The Omorr consulted the chart. "There was no trace of this in his blood work."

"There wouldn't be," I said as I wrote up orders for the new meds and a deep-tissue breathing treatment. "This is a hybrid fungus, created specifically to prepare soil for cultivation. It breaks down old plant matter and other solids while releasing nitrogen into the soil as a by-product."

Palalo's eyes widened, and he made a strong affirmative gesture.

"We should have detected trace amounts in his blood work," Squilyp said.

I shook my head. "Irrigation or immersion in liquid neutralizes and disperses the fungus; exposure to Palalo's bloodstream would have rendered it untraceable."

The Omorr gave me an odd look. "How did it get so deep into his lung tissue?"

"It was also designed to plant itself." I called over a charge nurse to review the changes in the patient's treatment before I moved to the next bed. Squilyp, however, kept watching me in an intent manner that made me feel somewhat uncomfortable.

"Don't you agree with my previous assessment?" I finally asked. "Or has my face become a new diagnostic tool?"

He seemed to choose his words carefully before he replied. "You used mold like the one infecting Palalo's lungs to treat the soil on Akkabarr?"

"There is no surface soil on my homeworld, only ice. The Iisleg do not farm; they hunt." I skimmed through the next patient's chart and noted that the back injury the patient had sustained had responded well to corrective spinal therapy.

"How did you know what the mold was without checking the medical database?" Squilyp persisted.

"I treated several cases of the same type of infection on K-2. It's a common complaint among agri workers. They call it planting lung." I turned to the patient, who was sitting up with an expectant look on her pretty face. "Good morning, Tabrea Torin. You appear to be ready for discharge."

The big female smiled. "That I am, Healer."

"Tabrea, your pardon," the Senior Healer said unexpectedly. "I must consult for a moment in private with Healer Torin." Squilyp took hold of my arm and guided me away from the berth until we were out of hearing range. "Jarn, are you certain that you treated patients for the same type of mold infection that Palalo has?"

"Of course I am." His apparent disbelief puzzled me. "The mold is a universal soil treatment used on hundreds of worlds. I've seen the same type of infection in the ER dozens of times."

"Tell me the names of these patients."

"Their names?" Impatient now, I planted my hands on my hips. "Squilyp, why are you making such a big deal about this? If you don't agree with my diagnosis--"

The Omorr interrupted me with a curt gesture. "You can't remember their names, can you?"

I thought for a moment. "No. I can't. Should I declare myself unfit now, before someone files a grievance against me?"

"You can't remember their names because you've never treated any patients with this mold infection," the Omorr said. "You've never been to K-2, Jarn."

I opened my mouth, closed it, and then exhaled slowly. "Of course, you are correct. I misspoke.
Cherijo
saw this type of mold-aspiration infection while she worked on K-2. Does that satisfy you, or must I contact the colony and have someone pull the charts out of the archives to verify the facts?"

"Did Cherijo write about these patients in her journals?" he asked. When I shook my head, he added, "Then Reever must have shared with you his memories of her treating patients with this condition."

"No, Reever never . . ." I trailed off as what he was saying sank in. "No. My husband did not witness the treatments. He would not have memories of them." I stared at the Omorr. "I'm right about the source of the infection. Squilyp, I
know
I am."