"I need a drink," he said solemnly.
"Ah'll buy," Patsy said.
Chapter Seven
Channa woke to an excruciating, high-pitched wailing.
The engines! she thought. I'm still on the derelict! I've got to get out of here!
She lifted her head with a gasp and laid it back down again with a heartfelt groan. This has to be a fatal headache, she thought, nobody could feel like this and live.
The ceiling overhead was a soothing pale blue as were the privacy screens around her. There was a vase of flowers on the bedside table and a bank of portable equipment on the other side, quietly talking to itself and occasionally waving a sensor probe over her body. A suit of working clothes, overtights and jacket and belt, were draped on a clothes stand at the foot of the bed. The air had a slight, pleasant scent of cedar.
Sickbay, she thought. The ambience was unmistakable.
The wailing went on and on, sometimes breaking into sharp yelps. I hope I live long enough to kill whoever is making that racket.
"Who is that?" she finally demanded.
"Ah, Channa," said Simeon in a voice as soft as rain water.
Channa sighed and closed her eyes again. It was restful, and her body was beginning to accept that she was alive and in no danger. Which was a difficult thing, if you'd gone under deeply concerned about your chances of ever waking up again.
"Welcome back to the living," said a flatter voice with a lilting singsong accent. There was a sound of movement.
She opened her eyes to see Doctor Chaundra leaning over her. He had his professional expression on; a sort of antiseptic smile, nothing like the genuine enthusiasm he showed in a social situation talking about his specialty. Channa managed the complex procedure of smiling and wincing simultaneously.
"My head," she said in a croaking voice, feebly raising a shaking hand to rub her brow.
"Got just the thing," he said. He touched the angle of her throat with an injector. It hissed and she felt a touch of cold.
Almost instantly, the pain boring its way into her brain began to fade. "Oh, Ghu! that's better." She licked dry lips.
"No, I have merely blocked the pain," the doctor said pedantically. "The organic damage is minimal but will take several days to heal."
"Thirsty?" She raised her brows in pathetic query.
Chaundra poured a glass of water from a bedside carafe, put in a straw and handed it to her.
She sucked greedily on the straw, mindful of her head position, and handed him the empty glass. "More," she demanded. He refilled it, and she drained it again almost as soon as he handed it to her. The wailer took off again. Channa frowned. "Who's that badly hurt?"
He grimaced. "She's one of the people we evacuated from the ship; the first one awake. We don't know who she is. She's done nothing but shriek since she woke up. To answer your other question, no, she's not badly hurt. She's dehydrated, and probably has a headache like yours from that, and she had a bloody nose from the abrupt deceleration."
There was an especially violent shriek and the sound of something metal tipping over and of things scattering. Voices murmured soothing words in edged tones.
"If she can scream like that with a headache like the one I woke up with, she's crazy," Channa said.
Chaundra nodded. "That, too, is a possibility, but I feel that she is presently venting hysteria as a by-product of coldsleep." He sighed. "The earliest methods sometimes had the effect of suppressing basic inhibition."
"Can't you give her something?" Simeon asked from a wall mike. "That sound has just gone from pathetic to seriously annoying."
"No," the medical chief replied. "Or rather, I'd prefer not to immediately. They drugged themselves rather heavily, indeed, presumably to keep their oxygen consumption down. I've no idea for how long a period of time, but from their physical condition, it must have been too long." He gave another of his sighs. "I'd really rather not put anything else into her system. Especially since many of the substances they used seem to have been past recommended shelf life, or discontinued types, or both."
"They say that if someone gets hysterical, a simple slap across-" Simeon began.
Chaundra interrupted him. "I am thinking that has more to do with relieving the frustration of the listeners than the distress of the patient," he said with a resigned smile.
"You're a saint, Doctor," Channa told him. Actually she knew that he was a pacifist widower with a passion for surgery, but no matter. "But I'm not. So, before I'm compelled to go over there and knock the little git through the wall, I'd like to get out of here."
He smiled and touched the machine. It waved more probes over her, prodding in two or three sensitive places. The readouts had him nodding almost at once. "Yes, you can be going now."
She stood with a satisfied sigh. "Um, is there anyone coherent awake yet?"
"Yes, a young man. He's still more than a bit groggy, so we haven't let him up yet. He wants to help this girl."
"Can't you put him on a pallet or in a chair and push him over there?" Simeon asked. "It might help both of them."
"Depends," Chaundra said, "on how he's doing."
"Just seeing him might help her," Channa suggested.
"Worth a try," Chaundra shrugged and grabbed a float chair from a cluster of them by the door. "Over here," he said and Channa followed, pulling on a dressing gown.
The man in question was the beautiful lad she herself had packed up. Simeon watched Channa's pupils enlarge and decided that she was probably responding even more enthusiastically than she had on the ship. Pheromones, he told himself wisely. And fewer distractions.
The young man had raised himself up on one elbow, a slight sweat glistening on his shapely brow. He looked at them with distress in his light blue eyes.
"Please, let me go to her," he pleaded. His accent was exquisite, his voice a light baritone. The language was recognizable Standard, although the vowels had an archaic tonality.
From the look on her face, Simeon decided that Channa would have taken him to hell if he wanted to go. Simeon wanted him off the station.
Guys like him cause more trouble than beautiful females, Simeon thought. On the other hand, if he can shut that screamer up, I'll put him on the payroll.
Channa and Chaundra helped the Adonis into the chair and pushed him over to the pallet where the young woman lay. He reached out for her hand and began stroking it.
She had waist-length dark hair and a pale, bony face with plain features and high cheekbones. Long, gold-lashed eyes of a dark blue that was almost black stared at him, her screeches cut off for a blissful moment of silence. Then the whites showed all round the iris of her eyes, and before Channa or Chaundra could stop her, she had grabbed the carafe from the table beside her and was swinging it at him.
"You did this! You could have killed me! I almost died!"
The metal carafe connected with his temple in a sickening smack. The young man slid bonelessly from the chair while, not content with the damage she'd just inflicted, the girl strove to climb over the safety railings on the side of her pallet, shrieking that it was his fault, all his fault. Then she began to sob with equal vigor. "My love, my love, what have they done to you?"