"Come on," Kale said. "I've got an idea."
Chapter 20
Lifeday
It took Zahara less than a minute to realize that Han Solo, whoever he was, was one of the most unusual inmates she'd ever encountered. The realization struck her most forcefully when she tried to explain to him what had happened aboard the barge, and how critically he and the Wookiee needed her assistance if they were going to stay alive.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Han said, waving an impatient hand in her face. "You're saying everybody on this flying trash can is dead except for us?" He looked at the Wookiee standing next to him as if to confirm what his ears were telling him. "Are you buying any of this?"
The Wookiee gave a plaintive, honking growl. Zahara didn't know much Shyriiwook, but most of what she'd picked up had to do with vocal inflection, and Chewbacca's was incredulity, pure and simple.
"Yeah," Han said, "me either." He looked back at Zahara. "That the best you can do, Doc? Or you got another tale you want to try out?"
"You'll see for yourself soon enough. The infection-it's some kind of virus-has an estimated mortality rate of ninety-nine-point-seven percent."
"Sounds like somebody's been getting their statistics from a droid." Han took a step back, taking his first real look at her and breaking into an appreciative smile. "Although I must say, Doctor, all things considered, you seem to be in pretty good shape."
Zahara felt her cheeks redden. "I'm. immune."
"Well, I guess we must be, too, huh?"
"It's possible, but I doubt it."
"So how come we're still alive?"
"You've been sealed away in solitary. Now that you're out here and exposed, though, I need to inject you with the anti-virus." She took the syringe from her pocket along with the basic medical kit that she carried with her everywhere. "This will only take a second. I just need to see your arm, and…"
At the appearance of the needle, the Wookiee snarled at her, a noise that went right through Zahara's thoracic cavity, and for the second time she saw the glint of his teeth, the bright white incisors, and caught a whiff of something feral, from either his fur or his breath. She took a step back.
"You need this," she said, and turned to Han. "Both of you do."
Han shook his head. "Wookiees aren't too big on needles. Neither am I."
"I'm a physician."
"Yeah, well, you might want to work on that bedside manner." He glanced at the weapon still in her hand. "Or has blasterpoint medicine become standard operating procedure for the Empire?"
"This was just a precaution. We can't afford to stand around and discuss this. Too many people have already died."
"Listen, Doc, I.," Han said, and stopped. Glancing back, following his line of sight, Zahara saw that he was staring at the outstretched leg protruding from around the corner, one of the guards whose bodies she'd stepped over to get here. Han craned his neck further, and she knew that he could see some of the other corpses as well.
When he looked back at her, the defiance in his expression had faded, replaced with something else-not fear necessarily, but a kind of acute awareness of his surroundings. He looked over at Chewbacca, and the Wookiee sniffed the air and let out a low, restless thragghh sound from somewhere deep inside his throat.
"Yeah," Han muttered. "Me, too." And then, begrudgingly, to Zahara, "I'm not crazy about my options here, Doc."
"Please," she said, holding his gaze. "You need this."
He reached down and pushed up his sleeve. Zahara realized that she wasn't going to be able to hold on to the blaster rifle and treat him at the same time. She set the blaster aside, kicking it out of the cell behind her, into the hallway, then took Han's arm, swabbed it, then slipped the needle in. Han winced as she pushed down the plunger.
"You tested this, right?"
"You're actually the first."
Han's eyes went huge. "What?"
"Relax," Zahara said. "How's your breathing?"
"I'll let you know in a minute," he said, "if I'm not already dead."
Zahara tried not to let the worry show on her face. She'd trusted Waste's analysis of the anti-virus implicitly, but that didn't mean there couldn't have been some margin of error along the way, and who knew exactly how it would interact with any individual's unique chemical makeup? And what would it do to a completely different species, a nonhuman?
But the alternative was to allow Chewbacca to become infected. And she wasn't at all sure that the anti-virus could make a difference at that point.
She turned to the Wookiee. "Your turn."
Chewbacca put out his arm. Finding a vein on a Wookiee was always a challenge, but she felt one beneath the thickly matted fur, sliding the needle in. He growled but didn't move.
"There," she said, "now we can…"
The Wookiee screamed.
The first thing Chewbacca felt was the pain of the young ones. It came at him from everywhere at once, a threnody of wounded voices, assailing him from all sides. He didn't know what it meant except that something bad had happened here aboard the barge, and now it was happening to him, too. In a horrible way he felt as if he were part of it, complicit in these unspeakable crimes, because of the injection that the woman had given him. The sickness she'd implanted under his fur, under his skin, was alive and crawling through him, a living gray thing going up his arm to his shoulder to his throat, and the sickness clucked its tongue and whispered, Yes, you did those things, yes, you are those things.
Had he done it? Had he somehow hurt them?
But that couldn't be right. The doctor hadn't poisoned him; she'd injected him with a cure. Then why did it hurt so much, and why did he still hear the young ones screaming?
His skull felt like it was filling with fluid, blocking out his sense of smell. But his hearing was keener than ever. Voices were shrieking at him, no longer pleading but accusing him of unspeakable atrocities, and when he looked down at his hands he saw that they were dripping with blood while the rank, salty flavor of their blood was in his mouth.
And then the sickness was in him.
And the sickness wanted to eat.
He snarled louder, lashed out, wanting to make it go away, but it was too deep already, burrowing through his memory, bringing back details he hadn't remembered in nearly two hundred years. He heard old lifeday songs from Kashyyyk, saw faces-old Attichitcuk, Kallabow, his beloved Malla-except their faces were changing now, melting and stretching, mouths hooking into strange, contemptuous grins. His father's eyes lit upon him, saw all the shame he tried to hide. They knew what he was now that the sickness was inside of him and what the sick-ness would make him do to the little ones. They knew how he would slaughter them in their cells and feast upon their steaming entrails, shoving them into his mouth without bothering to chew, enslaved by the sickness and its appetite. They saw how the sickness could not be sated, how it wanted to keep on killing and eating until there was nothing left but blood that might be lapped up from the cold durasteel floors. They said, These are the true songs of lifeday, these songs are eat and kill, eat and kill.
No, it's not true. It's not.
Screaming louder, a deafening roar, at least in his own mind, he felt the oblivion of the sickness coming and was grateful for it, an opportunity to hide, to get away from the things he was experiencing. He did not try to escape; he ran toward it eagerly.
Zahara jumped back, instinctively ducking and flinging both hands up to protect herself. Chewbacca's arm swung out blindly, the syringe still protruding from it, and the needle sailed across the cell like a poorly thrown dart, hitting the wall and disappearing somewhere in the half-fight. If she hadn't dropped down when she did, the Wookiee's arm would have crushed her throat.