“Let her go,” Clarke tells him. “We might need her.”
Yeager doesn’t budge.
Oh shit, Clarke thinks. Is he primed?
Yeager’s got a mutation: too much monoamine oxidase in his blood. It breaks down the brain chemicals that keep people on an even keel. The authorities tweaked him to compensate, back in the days when they could get away with such things, but he learned to get around it somehow. Sometimes he deliberately strings himself so tight that a sideways glance can send him off the deep end. It gets him off. When that happens, it doesn’t matter all that much whether you’re friend or foe. Times like that, even Lubin takes him seriously.
Lubin’s taking him seriously now. “Let her past, Han.” His voice is calm and even, his posture relaxed.
From down the corridor, a groan. The sound of something breaking.
Yeager snorts and tosses Seger aside. The woman staggers coughing against the wall.
“You too,” Lubin says to Rowan, who’s still discretely behind the striped line. To Yeager: “If it’s okay with you, of course.”
“Shit,” Yeager spits. “I don’t give a fuck.” His fingers clench and unclench as if electrified.
Lubin nods. “You go on,” he says casually to Clarke. “I’ll help Han hold the fort.”
It’s Nolan, of course. Clarke can hear her snarling as she nears the medbay: “Ah, the little fuckhead’s gone and shit himself...”
She squeezes through the hatch. The sour stench of fear and feces hits her in the face. Nolan, yes. And she’s got Creasy backing her up. Klein’s been thrown into the corner, broken and bleeding. Maybe he tried to get in the way. Maybe Nolan just wanted him to.
Gene Erickson’s awake at last, crouching on the table like a caged animal. His splayed fingers push against the isolation membrane and it just stretches, like impossibly thin latex. The further he pushes, the harder it pulls; his arm isn’t quite extended but the membrane’s tight as it’s going to go, a mass of oily indestructible rainbows swirling along lines of resistable force.
“Fuck,” he growls, sinking back.
Nolan squats down and cocks her head, birdlike, a few centimeters from Klein’s bloody face. “Let him out, sweetie.”
Klein drools blood and spit. “I told you, he’s—”
“Get away from him!” Seger pushes into the compartment as though the past five years—as though the past five minutes—never happened. She barely gets her hand on Nolan’s shoulder before Creasy slams her into a bulkhead.
Nolan brushes imaginary contaminants from the place where Seger touched her. “Don’t damage the head,” she tells Creasy. “Could be a password in there.”
“Everybody.” Rowan, at least, is smart enough to stay in the corridor. “Just. Calm. Down.”
Nolan snorts, shaking her head. “Or what, stumpfuck? Are you going call security? Are you going to have us ejected from the premises?”
Creasy’s white eyes regard Seger from mere centimeters away, a promise of empty and mindless violence set above a grinning bulldozer jaw. Creasy, it is said, has a way with women. Not that he’s ever fucked with Clarke. Not that anyone does, as a rule.
Rowan looks through the open hatch, her expression calm and self-assured. Clarke sees the plea hidden behind the confident façade. For a moment, she considers ignoring it. Her leg tingles maddeningly. At her elbow Creasy makes kissy-kissy noises at Seger, his hand viced around the doctor’s jaw.
Clarke ignores him. “What’s the deal, Grace?”
Nolan smiles harshly. “We managed to wake him up, but Normy here” —an absent punch at Klein’s head— “put some kind of password on the table. We can’t dial down the membrane.”
Clarke turns to Erickson. “How you feeling?”
“They did something to me.” He coughs. “When I was in coma.”
“Yes we did. We saved his—” Creasy bumps Seger’s head against the bulkhead. Seger shuts up.
Clarke keeps her eyes on Erickson. “Can you move without spilling your intestines all over?”
He twists clumsily around to show off his abdomen; the membrane stretches against his head and shoulder like an amniotic sac. “Miracles of modern medicine,” he tells her, flopping onto his back. Sure enough, his insides have all been packed back where they belong. Fresh pink scars along his abs complement the older ones on his thorax.
Jerenice Seger looks very much as if she wants to say something. Dale Creasy looks very much as if he wants her to try.
“Let her talk,” Clarke tells him. He loosens his grip just slightly; Seger looks at Clarke and keeps her mouth shut.
“So what’s the story?” Clarke prompts. “Looks like you glued him back together okay. It’s been almost three days.”
“Three days,” Seger repeats. Her voice is squeezed thin and reedy under Creasy’s grip. “He was almost disemboweled, and you think three days is enough time to recover.”
In fact, Clarke’s sure of it. She’s seen torn and broken bodies before; she’s seen multiarmed robots reassemble them, lay fine electrical webbing into their wounds to crank healing up to a rate that would be miraculous if it weren’t so routine. Three days is more than enough time to drag yourself back outside, seams still oozing maybe but strong enough, strong enough; and once you’re weightless again, and sheltered by the endless black womb of the abyss, you’ve got all the time in the world to recover.
It’s something the drybacks have never been able to grasp: what keeps you weak is the gravity.
“Does he need more surgery?” she asks.
“He will, if he isn’t careful.”
“Answer the fucking question,” Nolan snarls.
Seger glances at Clarke, evidently finds no comfort there. “What he needs is time to recover, and coma will cut that by two thirds. If he wants to get out of here quickly, that’s his best option.”
“You’re keeping him here against his will,” Nolan says.
“Why—” Rowan begins from the corridor.
Nolan wheels on her. “You shut the fuck up right now.”
Rowan calmly pushes her luck. “Why would we want to keep him here if it weren’t medically necessary?”
“He could rest up in his own hab,” Clarke says. “Outside, even.”
Seger shakes her head. “He’s running a significant fever—Lenie, just look at him!”
She’s got a point. Erickson’s flat on his back, apparently exhausted. A sheen of perspiration slicks his skin, almost lost behind the more conspicuous glistening of the membrane.
“A fever,” Clarke repeats. “Not from the operation?”
“No. Some kind of opportunistic infection.”
“From what?”
“He was mauled by a wild animal,” Seger points out, exasperated. “There’s no end to the kind of things you can pick up from something as simple as a bite, and he was nearly eviscerated. It would be almost inconceivable if there weren’t complications.”
“Hear that, Gene?” Clarke says. “You’ve got fish rabies or something.”
“Fuckin’ A,” he says, staring at the ceiling.
“So it’s your call. Want to stay here, let ’em fix you? Or trust to drugs and take your chances?”
“Get me out of here,” Erickson says weakly.
She turns back to Seger. “You heard him.”
Seger draws herself up, impossibly, perpetually, insanely defiant. “Lenie, I asked you to come along to help. This is the furthest thing from—”