Ell Donsaii 12: Impact! (15 page)

Dex turned and continued toward the butchering room. Most of the adult and young adult dalins of the tribe were already there, but Dex had not been surprised to find that Fantais hadn’t been participating. Fantais had been born into a high status and seemed to believe that hie was above such things despite the fact that hies status in the tribe had dropped substantially.

The butchering had turned into an assembly line process. Even though the tribe had never had this much meat at one time before, they all understood just how desperately they needed it
all
to be preserved. Some dalins were cutting the meat out, others were slicing it thinly and salting it. Another group were taking the meat into the smoking grotto or tending the fire in there. There was a cluster who were making sausage. Some of the sausage would become incredibly important if they couldn’t find plants to eat. Sausage made from some of the internal organs could keep you from getting sick from a lack of vegetables.

Dex wondered whether the meteorite could help them find some of the important plants in the world of dust and destruction outside. Hie had never been an expert at gathering plants and worried that perhaps those who
were
plant experts might not be able to make drawings that the meteorite could understand. Maybe the meteorite could teach some of those dalins to see light that was “more infrared than infrared?”

After a while Dex took a torch and went back and down in the cave system to where the deep river ran. Hie was musing about what a good thing it was that a river actually ran through the cave so that they had access to water without going outside. Then for the first time in hies life, hie wondered where the water came from that made up that river. What if that water became choked with dust as well?!

When hie got to the river, hie found with great relief that the water was still clear, cold and pure. Hie drank and washed blood off of himrself. Hie had old Bultaken’s zornit stomach with himr and hie took the time to fill it with water to take back to the other dalins.

As Dex climbed back up to the main caves where everyone was living hie heard Fantais’ voice saying, “Where is Dex?! Has hie deserted us?”

“I’m right here Fantais,” Dex said tiredly, “I went for water.”

Fantais’ wings rose in hostility. With what appeared to be a conscious effort hie brought them back down, but then said, “You’ve
got
to help us with Qes! Your stupid meteorite is making red lines on the wall, but
no one
understands them!”

Dex blinked a few times, astonishment rising in himr. After a moment, hie quietly said, “You’re wrong. I
don’t
have to help you. I don’t like you and I have
never
liked Qes. You are constantly rude to me and I often hear about ugly things you say behind my back. Just a little while ago you implied that
I
was the one who hurt Qes. If you truly believe that, then you
definitely
should not want me to be taking care of himr. If you
don’t
believe it’s true, you should apologize.” Dex turned and started towards the butchering room, but turned to say back over hies shoulder, “And, if you
want
my help, you should
ask
for it—not demand it!” Even with hies back-eyes Dex could recognize Fantais’ astonished expression.

Dex was again covered with blood from cutting the meat out of zornits by the time hie heard Fantais tentatively say behind himr, “Dex, I’m sorry. I… I know you had nothing to do with what happened to Qes. You’re… you are also the only one who might be able to heal hies arm. Otherwise hie will be dyatso.
I
couldn’t take care of himr and no one else will. Would you… would you
please
help us?”

Dex stood from the zornit. Hie thought for a moment of all the other things hie needed to do to help the entire tribe survive. Could hie rightfully refuse to help hies old enemy on the grounds that it might bring harm to all the others? Then hie realized that that was exactly what old Bultaken would have done when hie had been leader of the Yetany tribe.

And that had been one of the things Dex hated about Bultaken.

“Okay,” Dex said after a minute, “let’s go see what the meteorite’s red lines are saying.”

When they arrived at Qes’ side, Qes still lay unconscious. “Has hie been out like this the whole time?” Dex asked in astonishment.

“Hie woke up once, but as soon as hie saw hies deformed arm, hie passed out again.”

Dex knelt and studied Qes arm for a moment without touching it. Hie looked up at the meteorite, then over to where the meteorite had been displaying its drawings on the wall. Currently, the drawing showed a dalin whose arm looked odd. The portion of the arm near the hand, the same portion which was broken in Qes was enlarged so that it looked more like a bundle of sticks. “Meteorite,” Dex said, “I don’t understand the drawing. Usually you show one drawing after another so that we can see something happening. Can you do that here?”

“Sorry,” the meteorite responded, “we didn’t realize the drawings had stopped cycling through.” Immediately, the drawing which had been on the wall disappeared and was replaced by one showing a dalin whose arm appeared to be broken. Or at least it was deformed like Qes. Another dalin appeared in the next three drawings and pushed the arm back into a straight position. The meteorite spoke, “We have one of our experts at caring for broken bones here with us. Hie says that, at least in us, it is most important that the arm be straightened and then held that way.”

Subsequent drawings showed a dalin using a hand axe on a piece of wood, or at least Dex assumed it was a piece of wood. After a moment the meteorite confirmed this, saying, “We hope that one of your tribe members who works wood can shape pieces of wood to fit Qes arm. We call them ‘splints.’” The words the meteorite had uttered, “splints” was very bizarre, leaving Dex to wonder if this was what the meteorite’s home language sounded like. Dex had met a dalin from far away once. That dalin used some words that were very different from the words the Yetanys used, but the foreigner’s words weren’t nearly as different as this word “splint.”

The meteorite continued, “This might be more easily done by shaping a splint to fit the arm of someone who is similar in size to Qes.” The next drawing showed Qes arm tied to the piece of wood with several pieces of small rope. Then the drawings showed another piece of wood being shaped similarly to fit on the other side of the arm. Finally, the first splint was untied, then both splints were tied into place, one on each side of the arm. “The idea is that the two pieces of wood would hold the arm straight until it heals. In beings like us this might take 40 to 80 days, but we do not know how long it would take in a dalin.”

Dex studied the drawings as they cycled through the series of images again. It seemed an obvious enough way to treat a broken arm, though hie’d never heard of anyone doing such a thing. Hie glanced at Fantais, thinking to ask why hie hadn’t straightened Qes’ arm out himrself. Hie found Fantais’ eyes staring at himr. “Did you understand that?”

“No!” was all that Fantais said.

Dex turned back to Qes’ arm, grasped the two segments and bent them back straight in a single quick motion. Qes made a moaning sound and hies head rose. Hies eyes flashed open to stare at hies arm in Dex’s hands. Then hies head fell limply unconscious once more. Dex turned to Fantais and said, “Sit down here and hold Qes arm straight.”

“I can’t!”

“You
can
, and you
will
if you want hies arm to heal correctly. I can’t sit here and hold it, I’ve got to try to find someone to shape the
splints
to hold it.”

“Can’t you get someone else to do it?
I
don’t know
how
!”

“
No one
knows how!” Dex said exasperatedly. “We actually need
everyone
in the tribe to be working on preserving the meat from the zornits. Since you
haven’t
been helping with the meat, at the very least you could be useful by helping with Qes. I’m
not
going to ask someone who
is
working on the meat to stop preserving meat for the entire tribe and have them hold Qes arm straight instead, just because
you
don’t
want
to do it!”

Wide-eyed, Fantais squatted down beside Qes and gently took hold of hies arm. “What do I do if it starts getting crooked again?”

“Straighten it back out!” Dex said with evident frustration, letting go of Qes arm and standing up. “I’ll go see if anyone is willing to shape the splints.”

Somewhat to Dex’s surprise, Malnot volunteered to shape the sticks for Qes’ splints. Dex had been expecting one of the dalins who shaped wood for spears and other tools to do it because they had more experience with woodworking, however, they all seemed to be quite uncertain about the prospect of shaping wood to fit an arm.

Malnot had not volunteered immediately, apparently also expecting someone else to be better at it. Thinking about it as Dex went back to butchering zornits, hie realized that the spear shapers and other toolmakers tended to be dalins who had learned to do a particular task from someone else and then practiced until they became experts at it. Malnot, on the other hand, made many different things. Hie didn’t seem to be the best at making anything, but wasn’t at all afraid to try something new. In retrospect it seemed obvious that hie would be the best candidate for making something new like splints.

Phil had demanded that they move his bed into the big room where the other colonists were trying to set things up for Phil to be ported back to earth. With a great deal of coaching from a surgeon back on earth, Mark Wilson, the doctor on their team, had put a pin through the end of Phil’s thigh bone. Despite Mark injecting a bunch of local anesthetic and giving him some meds IV before putting the pin in, it had been a thoroughly unpleasant experience.

Next, an arrangement of pulleys and weights had been ported out from Earth and set up at the foot of Phil’s bed so that they could use the pin to apply traction to his leg. According to the x-rays Mark had shot, the “traction” was holding his broken hip in a much better position. The surgeon back on earth, however, had said that the position was not good enough to prevent arthritis so he still needed surgery. Apparently, the surgery would be even more difficult if the traction didn’t hold the bones in approximately the right place until he could get ported back home, so Phil would be in the traction until he got there.

After a while, Phil noticed that his hip didn’t hurt as badly in the traction as it had before the traction had been applied.

Phil had pictured the actual porting procedure as being fairly simple, but this proved not to be the case. First, a rolled up port had been sent out through the biggest port they had. This new port was oblong, and an even bigger oblong port was sent through the first one. Each port was bigger and sturdier and generated more heat when it was activated. The bigger ones had radiator fins that had to be attached to them before they could be used. Finally a very large, nearly round port came through the last oblong port. Even it wasn’t really big enough for his shoulders when his arms were down at his side but Phil’s body would be able to slide through if he kept his arms up over his head as if he were diving.

The machinists back at D5R stayed busy making more and more equipment that they sent through to Mars. This included brackets and frames that had to be assembled to hold the colonists’ dining tables tilted up at a steep angle. Then the port was placed down at the bottom end of the dining table so that Phil could slide down off the table and through the port in a very brief period of time. Phil hadn’t considered this, but apparently there was significant concern about keeping the port open long enough for him to go through. The power draw required to open a port this big to Mars was enormous, about two megawatts or enough to power a small town. When it opened, the waste heat warmed the room quickly and left the port itself almost glowing after it had been open a few minutes.

Fred Epstein and Carol unbolted and moved the port up to the top end of the table while Lindy Thompson brought in some pillows to catch the titanium “transfer jacket” that Phil was supposed to be put in before he was sent through the port.

All five of his fellow colonists stood by to catch the transfer jacket when it came through because, to test the port, they sent the jacket through with several big balloons full of water to simulate Phil’s mass. The transfer jacket looked pretty much like a Phil sized oval titanium pipe. It came shooting through with a crash and Phil’s fellow colonists had a bit of a struggle keeping it from falling off the table.

Diane ran tests on the port to make sure it had tolerated the transfer and showed no evidence that it would fail soon. Fred and Carol then unbolted and moved the port to the bottom of the table again, where they reattached it. The colonists tilted the table back flat for Phil to be transferred onto it.

Putting him into the transfer jacket, or “spam can” as Phil had begun thinking of it, turned into quite an ordeal. First they took the front half off the can, removed the bags of water and put the back half of the can on the ground off the end of his bed. Mark dosed Phil up with quite a bit of morphine and disconnected his traction. Then the other colonists picked Phil up by grabbing his sheet, two on each side. They shuffled forward, carrying him on the sheet from his bed to the spam can, trying to lower him into it gently. However, just the fact they had taken off his traction made him hurt. Carol tried to keep a constant pull on his Phil’s leg while he was being moved, but it was almost impossible to keep an even, steady traction while the others were shuffling him from one location to the other.

Every jerk caused quite a bit of pain.

They closed the lid on his can while they lifted it onto the table and positioned it for the actual transfer. Once he was in place, they opened the can back up and hung the traction weights off the end of the table in an effort to keep Phil comfortable while Mark got him ready.

Getting him ready essentially meant drugging him out of his mind. Phil was loaded up with anticonvulsants and given several tranquilizers. Right before they sent him, Mark was going to put him all the way under general anesthesia and put a tube in his throat to breathe for him. His muscles would be paralyzed, then the table would be tilted, the port opened and Phil would slide through the big port to arrive at the University Hospital in Chapel Hill. They had anesthesiologists and neurologists standing by there to try to do their best for him, even though no one was sure exactly what that would be.

Mark put a mask over his face, saying, “This is just oxygen for now.”

A few minutes later Phil groggily heard Mark say, “Hang that IV a little bit higher. Diane, are you ready to push the medications in those syringes?” Then he said, “Well, here we go.” Phil’s arm started to burn where the IV entered it.

The world floated away.

Phil had no awareness as the endotracheal tube went into his throat and was hooked up. The spam can was closed, the table tilted up, the port opened, and Phil shot through to earth, spam can and all.

***

A couple of techs wheeled the anesthesia machine into the recovery room and hooked it up. Clint started checking it over, what he thought of as a “preflight” of the machine. He’d been asked by his attending anesthesiologist, Dr. Norwood, to help with this and felt pretty excited about it. Someday, he might be able to tell people that he’d been present the first time a human being was ported. Even if he was just an anesthesia resident helping out, it was a momentous occasion. Of course, if it all went south and the poor bastard arrived here in pieces or completely out of his mind, it probably
wouldn’t
be something he’d want to brag about.

The guy was supposed to arrive with an endotracheal tube in place, but to have only been given a short-acting paralytic and propofol as anesthetics. Norwood had said that going through a port caused seizures in animals, so apparently this Martian astronaut was going to be loaded up with anti-seizure meds as well. Clint would need to hook his endotracheal tube up to the anesthesia machine and start giving him some inhalational anesthetic because the plan was to keep him under for a day or so before letting him wake up.

Norwood arrived and looked over the selection of the emergency drugs that Clint had checked out of the pharmacy. “Looks like you’ve got everything I’d thought of. Sure as hell, that means we’ll need some drug neither one of us considered.”

Clint asked, “Isn’t this guy supposed to need some kind of surgery on his hip?”

Norwood nodded, while still frowning at the selection of emergency drugs, apparently still trying to think of anything else they might need.

“As long as we’re keeping him asleep, why don’t they just take him on back to the operating room and fix his hip while he’s under?”

Norwood looked back up at him and shrugged. “I think they feel like being ported is traumatic enough. They’d like not to do both things at once. Besides, they want to be sure his brain’s okay before they start operating on him”

“But if he’s got to have both things done…”

“He’s also going to be the first human to go through a port. Probably the second human being through a port is going to want to know for sure whether any bad effects came from the port… or from the surgery.”

“So he’s just a guinea pig then?”

Norwood gave Clint an irritated look. “No, Dr. McVeigh, he’s a human being who’s decided to take the risk of being sent through a port in order to save his hip. As long as he’s taking that risk anyway, it seems only rational that we should try to gain as much information from this event as we can—to the benefit of the rest of mankind.”

“Yes sir.”

Norwood rolled his eyes at Clint. He seemed about to say something further, but then a group came in pushing a large device on wheels. The two men turned to watch.

One of the people with the device stopped to ask one of the nurses something. She pointed at Clint and Norwood. The men resumed rolling the big device in their direction. One of them evidently recognized Norwood, stepping ahead. He said, “Dr. Norwood, where should we set up?”

Norwood frowned at the device, “Which end of this thing will Mr. Zabrisk come out of?”

After a short discussion, they wheeled it around so that the large thing with all the radiator fins on it was up against the wall. It had a set of curved rails in front of it. Apparently, the astronaut would be in some kind of metal canister that would slide out of the port and onto the rails. Then they would be able to open the canister and get to the man inside. Once they were sure he was stable, they would be able to remove him from the canister and put him on a regular gurney, but for now they needed the anesthesia machine to be near where his head would be located after he’d come out.

After some further discussion they finally had positioned everything to their satisfaction. Quite a few people had gathered around and they had moved some equipment out of their way. With some surprise, Clint realized that one of the people gathered there was the Dean of the medical school. He turned to Norwood and quietly asked, “What’s the Dean doing here?”

“D5R donates huge quantities of money to the University. Besides, the University’s reputation will be affected by the outcome of this. The Dean’s probably sweating this even more than we are.”

Clint stepped closer to the big port the astronaut was supposed to come out of and was startled to realize that it was very cold. In fact when he looked at it he realized that  the surface of its radiator fins were frosting. “Why’s it so cold?” he asked of no one in particular.

A woman’s voice spoke over his shoulder, “Opening a port this big is going to generate a lot of heat. They’re porting liquid nitrogen through it to try to keep it cool.”

Clint started to look around to see who had spoken, but, just then the man who seemed to be in charge of the big port said, “Okay, the people on Mars say they’re all ready. Is everyone ready here?”

Several affirmative responses came. Norwood looked at the machine one more time, took a deep breath and said, “As ready as we can be.”

To Clint, it felt like everyone held their breath for a moment. Several loud clicks came from the port and then a substantial hum emanated from it. A few seconds later a bright flash of light signaled the opening of the port and a large gray metal tube shot out of it and onto the rails. The cold Clint had been feeling from the radiating fins immediately became heat. Hot! Hot enough that he shuffled a little further away, even though his eyes were fixed on the metal tube containing their patient.

Several of the people from D5R stepped up, flipped latches, and lifted the top half off of the tube exposing a man laying inside. He had his hands up over his head like a diver which surprised Clint. His eyes were taped shut and an endotracheal tube was taped in place where it came out of his mouth. There was an IV bag lying on his chest. Clint picked it up and hung it from an IV pole, eying it to be sure that the IV was still running.

Norwood disconnected the man’s endotracheal tube from the tubing it had been attached to. Clint distantly noted that the tubing had been cut off when the port closed. Norwood hooked the man’s tube up to the circuit on the anesthesia machine and turned on some isoflurane. Apparently, some neurologist who’d been studying porting of living beings thought that animals who went through ports did better if they were kept on isoflurane for a while afterwards. Clint hooked up a set of EKG leads, an oxygen saturation monitor, a temperature thermocouple and a BIS monitor to follow the astronaut’s brain waves.

The woman behind him, the one who’d explained the liquid nitrogen in the port, said, “What’s all that stuff you just hooked him up to?”

“Standard anesthesia monitors,” he responded, and listed them off. “We don’t always use a BIS monitor, but since porting is supposed to induce seizures, it seemed like a good idea to follow his brain wave activity.”

“Oh,” she said, sounding ineffably sad.

The way she’d said it made Clint’s hair stand on end. He suddenly worried that somehow one of the patient’s relatives had been allowed into the room. Having someone with an emotional attachment present in a life-threatening situation could be problematic. He glanced quickly over his shoulder to see who he’d been speaking to.

The woman was about his own age and very, very pretty. Suddenly, even more goosebumps shot down his spine.

Ell Donsaii!

***

Los Angeles, California—The news from TC3 has not been good. Video released by Team Teecee shows that dust continues to fill the atmosphere in the vicinity of the cave of the teecees that so many of us have become attached to. The dust is so thick that visibility is limited to no more than a few feet. The teecees seem to be safe for now, living in the depths of the cave system in which they have made their homes in the past. D5R has provided them with “misters” which clear the dust out of the air inside their caves. They have also provided them with goggles and breathing filters which allow them to go outside, however the world outside their cave has been devastated. As you can see in these radar images provided by the research team, enormous tracts of the vegetation have been blown down. No animal life is moving around. The teecees have been butchering a herd of grazing animals that died nearby. They’re preserving the grazers’ meat, but it is unclear how our friends will continue to survive when that runs out.