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God, it was finally happening-the ultimate humiliation-he was going to throw
up in a space suit. In moments, everyone would know of his hilarious weakness.
Absurd, for a would-be Imperial officer to get space-sick. Absurd, absurd, he
had always been absurd. He had barely the presence of mind to hit his
ventilator controls to full power with a jerk of his chin, and kill his
broadcast-no need to treat his mercenaries to the unedifying sound of their
commander retching.
"Admiral Naismith?" came an inquiry from the tactics room. "Your medical
readouts look odd-telemetry check requested."
The universe seemed to narrow to his belly. A wrenching rush, gagging and
coughing, another, another. The ventilator could not keep up. He'd eaten
nothing this day, where was it all coming from?
A mercenary pulled him out of the air, tried to help him straighten his
clenched limbs. "Admiral Naismith? Are you all right?"
He opened Miles's faceplate, to Miles's gasp of "No! Not in here-"
"Son-of-a-bitch!" The man jumped back, and raised his voice to a piercing cry.
"Medtech!"
You're overreacting, Miles tried to say; I'll clean it up myself... Dark
clots, scarlet droplets, shimmering crimson globules, floated past his
confused eyes, his secret spilled. It appeared to be pure blood. "No," he
whimpered, or tried to. "Not now..."
Hands grasped him, passed him back to the shuttle hatch he had entered moments
before. Gravity pressed him to the corridor deck-who the devil had upped it to
three-gee?-hands pulled his helmet off, plucked at his carefully-donned
carapace. He felt like a lobster supper. His belly wrung itself out again.
Elena's face, nearly as white as his now, circled above him. She knelt, tore
off her servo glove and gripped his hand, flesh to flesh at last. "Miles!"
Truth is what you make it... "Commander Bothari!" he croaked, as loud as he
could. A ring of frightened faces huddled around him. His Dendarii. His
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people. For them, then. All for them. All. "Take over."
"I can't!" Her face was pale with shock, terrified. God, Miles thought, I must
look just like Bothari, spilling his guts. It's not that bad, he tried to tell
her. Silver-black whorls sparkled in his vision, blotting out her face. No!
Not yet-
"Leige-lady. You can. You must. I'll be with you." He writhed, gripped by some
sadistic giant. "You are true Vor, not I... Must have been changlings, back
there in those replicators." He gave her a death's head grin. "Forward
momentum-"
She rose then, determination crowding out the hot terror in her face, the ice
that had run like water transmuted to marble.
"Right, my lord," she whispered. And more loudly, "Right! Get back there, let
the medtechs do their job-" she drove away his admirers. He was flipped
efficiently onto a float pallet.
He watched his booted feet, dark and distant hillocks, waver before him as he
was borne aloft. Feet first, it would have to be feet first. He barely felt
the prick of the first I.V. in his arm. He heard Elena's voice, raised
tremblingly behind him.
"All right you clowns! No more games. We're going to win this one for Admiral
Naismith!"
Heroes. They sprang up around him like weeds. A carrier, he was seemingly
unable to catch the disease he spread.
"Damn it," he moaned. "Damn it, damn it, damn it..." He repeated this litany
like a mantra, until the medtech's second sedative injection parted him from
his pain, frustration, and consciousness.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
He wandered in and out of reality, like being lost in the Imperial Residence
when he was a boy, trying various doors, some leading to treasures, others to
broom closets, but none to familiarity. Once he awoke to Tung, sitting beside
him, and worried about it; shouldn't the mercenary be in the tactics room?
Tung eyed him with affectionate concern. "You know, son, if you're going to
last in this business, you have to learn to pace yourself. We almost lost you
there."
It sounded like a good dictum; perhaps he'd have it calligraphed for the wall
of his bedroom.
Another time, Elena. How had she come to sickbay? He'd left her in the
shuttle. Nothing stayed where you put it ...
"Damn it," he mumbled apologetically, "things like this never happened to
Vorthalia the Bold."
She raised a thoughtful eyebrow. "How do you know? The histories of those
times were all written by minstrels and poets.
You try and think of a word that rhymes with 'bleeding ulcer'."
He was still dutifully trying when the greyness swallowed him again.
Once, he woke alone and called over and over for Sergeant Bothari, but the
Sergeant didn't come. It's just like the man, he thought petulantly, underfoot
all the time and then gone on long leave just when he needed him. The
medtech's sedative ended that bout with consciousness, not in Miles's favor.
It was an allergic reaction to the sedative, the surgeon told him later. His
grandfather came, and smothered him with a pillow, and tried to hide him under
the bed. Bothari, bloody-chested, and the mercenary pilot officer, his implant
wires somehow turned inside out and waving about his head like some strange
brachiated coral, watched. His mother came at last and shooed away the deadly
ghosts like a farm wife clucking to her chickens. "Quick," she advised Miles,
"calculate the value of e to the last decimal place, and the spell will be
broken. You can do it in your head if you're Betan enough."
Miles waited eagerly all day for his father, in this parade of hallucinatory
figures; he had done something extremely clever, although he could not quite
remember what, and he ached for a chance at last to impress the Count. But his
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father never came.
Miles wept with disappointment.
Other shadows came and went, the medtech, the surgeon, Elena and Tung, Auson
and Thorne, Arde Mayhew, but they were distant, figures reflected on lead
glass. After he had cried for a long time, he slept.
When he woke again, the little private room off the sickbay of the Triumph was
clear and unwavering in outline, but Ivan
Vorpatril sat beside his bed.
"Other people" Miles groaned, "get to hallucinate orgies and giant cicadas and
things. What do I get? Relatives. I can see relatives when I'm conscious. It's
not fair..."
Ivan turned worriedly to Elena, who was perched on the end of the bed. "I
thought the surgeon said the antidote would have cleared him out by now."
Elena rose, and bent over Miles in concern, long white fingers across his
brow. "Miles? Can you hear me?"
"Of course I can hear you." He suddenly realized the absence of another
sensation. "Hey! My stomach doesn't hurt."
"Yes, the surgeon blocked off some nerves during the repair operation. You [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]