“Have you behaved yourself?” she asked the girl. Her voice cracked, dry from oxygen therapy and so many days of silence.
“I missed you! You sleeped a long time.”
“I was dreaming about you. Thank you for being here. I love you to pieces,” she told the young girl. Her throat felt raw and she didn’t want to speak much. Lara’s soft hair and skin were bliss to Rianya’s hands. She could hardly stop touching her in an effort to reconnect and validate her consciousness.
Her whole body ached and it was agony to move even a centimeter. Dr. Adams came up to the bed and pressed a subdermal injection of something in her neck. Doctors were always doing things to patients without asking them.
“It’s an analgesic,” he told her before she asked.
“Something to eat,” she told the doctor. “And water,” she croaked.
“I’ll take care of it young lady. How about you, Zalara? Are you hungry?” Her sorrel hair bobbed up and down. “Dinner coming up,” Adams promised and he left the two alone.
“Can you come home now?”
“I don’t think Dr. Adams will let me. I’m still sick.”
“Hello, Love.” Rianya raised her head and her heart opened up. Tom stood in the doorway, dressed in his blue duty uniform.
“Hi.” He calmly walked in and leaned over to hold her, and Zalara as well. His body was warm, and solid, his hair soft on her face, and its amiable aroma of timber and grass woke up her senses.
“How do you feel?” he asked, petting her hair.
“Tired. Hungry.”
“You look much better,” he said, picking Zalara off the bed and taking her place on the narrow parcel of mattress.
“I look like a, oh, a zompire?” Tom tried to suppress a smile but it broke out anyway.
“A zombie, and you do not. We were all worried about you.”
“I’ve been told.” She cleared her throat with a raspy cough. The pain was fading. “What’s been going on? Is the pandemic resolved?”
“No, in fact it’s worse now than before. It’s been a long week. I’ll tell you another time.”
“It’s only been a week?” she said, laying back against a pile of pillows. She suddenly felt soft, relaxed, and not nearly so many aches and pains. She yawned and felt her eyelids droop no matter how much she tried to keep them open.
“Love, you rest,” Tom told her. She felt weightless, felt Tom’s lips brush against her cheek, abruptly took a deep breath and relaxed.
A bright sound compelled her to open her eyes. The lighting was soft, dim, and the blankets warm. Rianya snuggled down into the warm cradle, closing her eyes to blot out any distractions from the solace. Breathing was still difficult, but far from the boulder crushing pain it had been.
Yesterday, Rianya verily begged her brain for death to end the torture of the disease. Death would have been welcome if the flames within her body would have ceased. Adams, Mills, and Ferris came and went with solemn faces and low voices; Adams had reached for her face, her ears, and then she woke up to Zalara’s face a few inches from hers, her sweet jade eyes the same color as Tom’s. She was alive.
She felt a warm touch on her neck and opened her eyes.
“I hope I didn’t wake you,” Ferris said. “You look so much better, Anya.”
“I feel so much better. Where’s Zalara?”
“I think she and Honey are in the kitchen ‘helping’ Bailey. Do you feel like talking? I wanted to talk to you about Hero.”
“I’ll never do that again, I promise, Jane. Sterile technique from here on!” She coughed a few times and struggled to sit up.
“Not about that. While you were sick we went to Cuatro to try and get Kiians to go to Cinco and help with the plague project. They didn’t go, but they did have another interesting artifact for our museum.”
“Interesting?”
“They had a very small spacecraft that was wrecked in front, it must have crashed. When we got into it, we found out it belonged to our mummy. His name was Vaughn Wiseman.”
“Honestly?” She sat up a little higher.
“Dr. Adams took the samples you had sequenced and found that he’s mostly human, but he has a couple other gene sequences.”
“He looks human, silly ears and all.”
“On the outside.”
“So how old is he?”
“He’s not born yet.” Rianya frowned slightly and didn’t reply. “He’s from the future.”
“How can he not be born? His body is dated. He exists.”
“That’s what’s so exciting! He will be born in 2340, and in 2370 around then, he traveled to Earth 1350, more than a thousand years, and he was on his way forward when he fell out of his quantum something and crashed in 1750 on Cuatro, 400 years ago.”
“Can you say that again, slower? I thought you said a person can’t time travel. Now you sound like Tom.”
“Well, this one did. From his logs, it seems he went back to the Middle Ages on Earth to stop the Black Plague, but the 24th century cure didn’t work on the 14th century Yersinia. He and his partner caught it and were going home, apparently, we think to be cured, when they ended up on Cuatro in the 18th century. He went back a thousand years and 40 light years, but came forward only five hundred years and 20 light years.”
“He brought the plague from Earth to Cuatro? Is that what caused the extinction? How did the plague get to Cinco?”
“We think so, the mammalian extinction on Cuatro, started about 350 years ago. We haven’t nailed down the transfer to Cinco yet. Seems they probably used some of the future Earth technology to make interplanetary ships.”
Rianya sat dumfounded and blinked a few times in case her eyes and ears weren’t working correctly. Jane was perfectly serious.
“That’s…that’s extraordinary. I don’t know what to think about the whole thing.”
“Well, we can call him Vaughn now instead of Hero. He wasn’t a hero. Well, maybe he was trying to be a hero. But it got to Cinco somehow after Vaughn arrived on Cuatro. Maybe the Pegasi used it as a biologic weapon, or the Cuatrons used it as a biological weapon in a civil war, or who knows, but the timeline makes sense now.” Rianya smirked at the thought of the timeline making sense when making sense was the last thing it did.
“I wish I could help.”
“No, stay right here and just have sympathy for him instead.”
“Do you know when can I can leave sick bay?”
“I’ll tell Doc to come in. I just wanted you to know about the discovery we made and what it means. Get some rest, Sweetie.” Jane left her room. She coughed up some pinkish brown goop and spit it into a towel by her side. She just wanted to get back in her own bed with her daughter and husband and get back to normal as soon as possible.
The news wouldn’t stop churning in her head, though. A part human time traveler caused an extinction by accident. Extraordinary. It was unbelievable. Thinking about it made her tired again. Dr. Adams appeared with a tray of warm chicken casserole and hot tea, set it down, then sat in the chair next to her bed.
“You can go home tomorrow.”
~~~
“Mr. May, any word from the landing party?” Jackson paced slowly fore and aft in the bridge, absently checking the chronometer that seemed to have stopped advancing.
“Still nothing, Captain.”
“You still have a fix on the Pegasi mother ship?”
“They don’t seem to be aware their shuttle and people are missing, at least not yet.”
“I want to know the second they pull out of orbit headed in any direction.”
“Aye, sir.”
“Mr. Rougeau, are we prepared to leave orbit? I want to wait for the Osprey to return but if the Pegasi ship comes for us I want to be well ahead of them.”
“The course is still laid in, Captain, standing by.”
“Security Block to Jackson.”
“What is it?”
“Our guests have requested an audience with you, sir,” Bowen said in all seriousness.
“I’ll be there shortly.” Jackson tapped the intercom to close the channel. “You boys clear on the plan? We wait for the Osprey to contact us but if the Pegasi come we retreat.”
“Aye, sir,” both Rougeau and May answered together.
Jackson stopped in his office to check his agenda and stats before he rushed down to talk to Dukvita. It was better to make him wait anyway. Any advantage, mental or technological was welcome against someone a quarter meter taller and 50 kilos heavier who had a well-armed ship nearby. Jackson straightened his collar before he walked into the brig.
“What can I do for you, Dukvita?”
“Jackson, we’d like to engage your shuttle and return to our ship.”
“Really? That’s all?” Jackson wanted to tread gently as to avoid igniting a fire but it was hard to resist the bait. “I thought perhaps you were interested in ending your business operations on this planet so the Cinconians can end this pandemic.”
“You haven’t offered to make it worth our while.”
“Surely you have other merchandise to trade with them. I think they could use some infrastructure and a civilized way of electing their officials, not to mention robotic technology to get rid of their slave caste. I bet you could supply them with any number of more profitable items.”
“Not necessarily,” Dukvita replied.
“Certainly, you know that if you keep your customers riddled with disease they could die out.”
“Jackson, what do you want?”
That was much too easy. Red flags waved around in Jackson’s head and his attention focused sharply on the black eyes set in a green skinned head. Dukvita’s venom gland glistened as fresh olive green matter increasingly oozed. He’d never been good at poker but he could read a bluff with confidence.
“You’re the one who asked for a conference,” Jackson said.
“You offered your com system.”
“I can send any message you like anywhere you like.”
“If you let me contact my ship they will collect us and no longer be in your way.”
“You’re ending your antibiotics trade?”
“Jackson, you aren’t listening very well.”
“And neither are you. You’re no better than narcotics pushers, keeping your victims addicted and ill while you provide them with stronger and stronger antibiotics, creating a germ no one can kill eventually. We will be curing this population and there will no longer be a market for your medicinals, am I right?”
“How can you possibly cure a billion Cinconians?”
“We’ve wiped out many such diseases on Earth. Polio, small pox, varicella, eradicated Guinea worms, measles, dare I say malaria – we know what we’re doing. We’re here to help these people, not indenture them with an incurable addiction to antibiotics.”
“You humans are like that,” Dukvita said with what could only be described as a smirk on his face. “Let me contact my ship.”
“Here’s the deal, old buddy. When my shuttle returns, I’ll contact your ship and let them know you’re here. In fact, I’d be happy to deliver you if it’s convenient. Then we’re getting on with our mission while you reconvene and rethink your business with these people.” Jackson turned without waiting for an answer. “Bowen, get these fellas something to eat. I imagine they’d like to keep up their weight. Sushi, maybe?”
For once, the tight shoe was on the big green foot instead of his own. Lee and York would bring back Dr. Gregory, they’d wait out the obscene gladiator combat elections while on the ship, then get back to business and be on their way to pick up the science team on Beta Hydri Four. He strolled up the corridor toward the elevator.
“Bridge to Captain Jackson.”
“Jackson, go ahead.”
“The shuttle called in sir, they have Dr. Gregory and are on their way up, ETA fourteen minutes.”
“Excellent, thank you, May.” Jackson upped his pace.
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