Cyborg Nation (35 page)

She would have access to medical equipment even if there were no doctors to help her—she knew if they had a city, they would have to have some sort of medical facilities.

Those thoughts eased her stress over the flight more than thoughts of creature comforts had. Soon, whatever it was that was wrong with her, she’d know, and not knowing was more scary than knowing would be, she assured herself. Even if knowing still meant she couldn’t do anything about it, she thought it was the suspense and the unknown that was most frightening.

It was night by the time they arrived. That wasn’t surprising since they’d already stopped to make camp for the day and prepare a meal as they usually did before dark because once they’d begun to have to supplement their food by hunting, they’d also had to have fire to cook it, and Gideon didn’t allow fires after darkness fell. It had been dark, though, for several hours by the time she saw the lights of the city.

Four hours, maybe, flying? It could’ve been as little as two, she supposed, because she was a nervous wreck and not in any condition to judge, but even if it hadn’t been but two, that meant they’d still been probably a thousand miles from civilization, weeks more of walking if they hadn’t been picked up.

It must have been a military patrol, she decided. She hadn’t heard them say, but it didn’t seem likely they’d been out looking for them.

Then again, they might have. They could’ve found the crash site and have been looking for them since. If they’d found anything to indicate there were survivors and decided to look, Gideon, Jerico, and Gabriel had left a trail of trog bodies behind them as evidence of their passing. It couldn’t have been too hard to track them.

She was so weak with relief when the ship finally landed she didn’t think she could’ve walked if she’d had to. To her dismay, however, it wasn’t any of
her
men who helped her from the craft. Instead, one of the soldiers scooped her up and leapt from the craft, catching her so by surprise she only had time to look around for Gideon and the others, to catch a fleeting glimpse of them and then the door closed and the craft rose again.

“What’s happening? What’s going on?”

“You are in need of medical attention. I am taking you to the med center.”

Bronte peered at the man in the dim artificial light. She couldn’t tell much about him beyond the fact that his profile was lean and uncompromising. Cyborg, she thought, feeling her stomach tighten into a little harder knot. “But … what about the others? My companions, Gideon and Jerico and Gabriel?”

“They will be debriefed.”

Bronte stared at him uncomprehendingly. “Debriefed?”

He didn’t volunteer anything at the questioning lilt to the word, didn’t even glance at her.

“What does that mean?” she tried again.

“Questioned.”

“About what?”

“The crash.”

“Oh.” Anger displaced some of Bronte’s uneasiness. “They’re not even going to let them rest first?”

He looked directly at her for the first time and Bronte’s stomach executed a little flip flop, partly from surprise, but mostly because he far more handsome than she’d expected. Were any of the cyborgs
not
handsome, she wondered?

She must have been brain dead when they’d put her on the ship not to have noticed him before.

But then, she hadn’t really looked at any of the men. Jerico’s display of jealousy had been enough by itself to discourage her from looking with any interest, but she’d known if Jerico felt that way then Gideon and Gabriel certainly would be and she hadn’t wanted to arouse their sense of possessiveness. And, once she’d gotten on board, she hadn’t been able to focus on anything but her fear of flying.

“They are soldiers. They know what to expect.”

She wished
she
did. Beyond what he’d told about the med center, she had no idea what to expect. Her companions hadn’t enlightened her, but she hadn’t particularly worried about it because she hadn’t expected to be separated from them.

Realizing she wasn’t likely to get anything from him that was going to ease her mind, she allowed her curiosity to divert her and looked around. It was too dark to tell much about the city. There was some artificial lighting along the streets, but only a sprinkle here and there that illuminated small patches of building and street, signs mostly and there weren’t very many of those. In some ways, it looked very little different from any other city she’d ever seen—except the notable dearth of artificial lighting and signs, and the fact that there didn’t seem to be a great many people moving about the streets.

Maybe it was later than she’d thought? Or maybe it was just that this particular area wasn’t frequented that much at night?

The buildings, not surprisingly, were all new looking and yet she noticed as she began to focus on her surroundings that most of the structures had a good bit of ornamentation about them—surrounding doors and windows, edging the roof lines and, in the cases of multi-storied buildings, delineating one floor from the next—more reminiscent of ancient structures she’d seen in the cities than modern architecture.

It struck her as odd, at all, that they would’ve modeled their structures along the lines of centuries old Earth architecture instead of the sleek, practical, and ultra conservative modern buildings of the times and stranger still when it dawned on her that the architects of the city were cyborgs. She would’ve thought they, being creatures of logic far more than humans were, would’ve been more inclined to build strictly utilitarian structures. It couldn’t be avoided that they hadn’t, that, by some odd quirk, they’d gone to great lengths to beautify everything around them.

Otherwise everything was as neat and orderly as she would’ve expected, and yet far more so than one would see in a city built and occupied by humans. There were no stray bits of trash here and there--discarded containers or partially eaten food tossed aside, no overflowing trash containers, no stray animals wandering around to scavenge … or homeless human scavengers.

There were no detectable defects in workmanship in anything that she saw—no slightly off kilter curb or leaning signs. The streets, curbs, and sidewalks were arrow straight from what she could see, the buildings too—the lines of windows, and doors, and walls were absolutely perpendicular. Even the ornamental designs were absolutely symmetrical—every leaf, flower, curlicue, and animal carved in relief was even, precise.

There were no vehicles along the roads, no sign that the roads were used for vehicles. She supposed they must have them, else why the roads? But undoubtedly the roads were primarily for servicing vehicles, not personal ones, because she didn’t see any and even if it was late, it seemed that she would.

Aside from that, the craft had set them down at the edge of the city. The soldier had already carried her several blocks.

Her mind had wandered from that thought to wondering where the base was that Gideon and the others had been taken to when she noticed the soldier turn and head directly toward a building several stories taller than the others around them. This one had the definite characteristics of a med center. Wide sliding doors opened to a brightly lit waiting area that was deserted except for the man she could see seated at a desk just inside.

The man looked up disinterestedly as the doors opened for them, did a double take and then stood up. “This is the earth doctor of children,” the man carrying her announced as the receptionist came around to greet them.

She supposed he was a receptionist. He was dressed in a medic’s uniform—no name tag.

“A human?”

The soldier turned his head to her and allowed his gaze to flicker over her face. “Yes. A human female, injured.”

Bronte was about to object—she was mostly healed, after all—but she didn’t doubt she was suffering some malnutrition from their limited diet, exposure since they’d had no shelter, exhaustion, and god only knew what else.

He didn’t ask her name or give her his any more than the soldier had. Obviously they weren’t prone to waste a lot of time with frivolous social chatter. “I’m Dr. Bronte Nichols.”

Both men stared at her blankly, almost as if a dog had suddenly talked. If she hadn’t already guessed that neither of them hailed from the Hunter class, she knew it then. “And you are?”

“Medic Brent MCS78206.”

“Master Sergeant, Caleb CS95031.”

Bronte looked from one to the other in surprise as they both spoke almost at the same moment.

“I will take her to the examination room.”

“I will take her,” Caleb responded coldly. “I am ordered to keep her within sight.”

Uneasiness moved over Bronte as the two men stared at one another. There was nothing challenging about the expression of either, and yet she had the distinct feeling there was a latent battle of wills in progress. Finally, the medic turned, passed through another set of double doors, and led them to a room just a few yards from the entrance.

“You will undress,” Medic Brent informed her as he passed the examination table and moved to the control panel of the scanner at one end.

It was standard medical procedure and yet the moment Bronte realized that Caleb had every intention of monitoring the proceedings discomfort settled over her. She stared at him for several moments after he’d settled her on the examination table and withdrawn to a position near the door, assuming ‘parade rest’. He stared back at her unblinkingly.

Mindful of how angry Jerico had been at the possibility of anyone else seeing her naked, Bronte looked around a little hopefully for a hospital gown. There wasn’t one. There wasn’t even a sheet on the examination table.

She saw when she turned to look at the medic that he was waiting for her to comply. “There aren’t any gowns?”

He exchanged a look with the sergeant, seemed to consider it for a moment and then replied, “No.”

She wasn’t ordinarily terribly self-conscious, particularly not in respect to a medical examination. She was abruptly acutely conscious of the defects of humans in general and her in particular, however. The cyborgs, due to superior genetics, were as perfect as the city they’d created, virtually flawless. She’d been a long way from perfection before the accident. She shuddered to think how far she was from physical perfection now and she didn’t especially want to expose it for them to examine it.

Somehow, though, she didn’t think she had a choice, and beyond that she knew she needed medical attention.

Sucking in a shaky breath, she focused on removing her makeshift garments and lay down on the table, staring up at the ceiling and trying to block out the certainty that both men were looking her over with eyes that missed nothing.

The medic set the scanner and took up a position in front of the vid as the instrument began its trek down her body. Surreptitiously, Bronte watched his face, although what she thought he might give away of his thoughts she had no idea. Professionals in general were trained to keep their thoughts to themselves to keep from alarming a patient unnecessarily so it wasn’t at all likely that the medic would give anything away even if he saw something. And, considering he was a cyborg, it was only that much less likely he would be horrified by anything he saw.

The scanner stopped at her toes. “First scan complete,” the computer announced. The scanner began the back scan.

Bronte’s thoughts shifted abruptly to the one thing that had been worrying her for weeks. Try though she might to keep her thoughts from affecting her, she felt her heart rate pick up with anxiety a split second before the computer announced it.

“You have nanos,” the medic said. There was no noticeable nuance of surprise in his voice but the fact that he’d announced it at all meant he was.

Bronte swallowed with an effort against the dryness in her throat. “Yes. I was hurt in the crash. Gideon, Jerico, and Gabriel all contributed some of their nanos to keep me alive.”

“They have repaired the damage from the crash.”

They’d also, to her certain knowledge, repaired her defective eyesight. When he stopped the scan over her abdomen, she waited for him to tell her what else the little bastards had been up to once they’d run out of things to fix.

Despite her certainty that he wouldn’t give anything away, he did. She just wasn’t certain what his expression denoted as he studied the screen with frowning intensity. “Gestating,” he finally said slowly, flicking a glance at Caleb.

Bronte followed the direction of the medic’s gaze, stared at the taut faced soldier a moment and looked at the medic again while that slowly sank in. “Are you sure?” she demanded, tensing to sit up to look at the monitor herself and then forcing herself to relax again.

The medic looked at her strangely. “I am certain. There are three. This makes it difficult to ascertain time elapsed.”

Bronte stared at him blankly. “Three what?”

His face went taut, his lips tightening. “Cyborg/human fetuses.”

Bronte thought for several moments she would faint. She closed her eyes as the shock rolled over her in a cold wave. Instead of fainting, however, she burst into tears, sobbing loudly in spite of her efforts to stem the excess of emotion. It was ridiculous, she knew, to get so emotional over relief, but she’d worked so hard to convince herself that she had to face the likelihood that something was terribly wrong with her it was as if the abrupt lifting of her certainty of horrible death had broken the dam holding back everything she’d tried not to feel. “I don’t understand,” she wailed when she finally managed to find her voice. “The crash … how could I
still
be pregnant when I was hurt so badly? I was sure even if I
had
been that it would’ve been terminated by the injuries.”

Needless to say, the medic couldn’t answer that question any better than she could. She discovered, though, when she’d mopped the tears from her eyes so that she could see that the medic and the soldier had retreated to the hallway outside the examination room. It occurred to her abruptly that they probably thought she’d come unhinged from everything that had happened. She tried harder to regain control over her emotions but it seemed beyond her. The dam had broken and she
had
no control over the emotions pouring out.