A White Space Series by Elizabeth Bear

Author:Elizabeth Bear
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Sci-Fi, Fantasy

CHAPTER 30

I WOKE UP IN THE HOSPITAL. Core General, in fact, because that was how fancy I was now.

I met a nice doctor there. Her name was K’kk’jk’ooOOoo, and she had beautiful gray eyes and was sleek and fast.

Unfortunately, she was a dolphin-like K’juUUuuU who came from a water world, so it never would have worked out. But it turns out that sonar is a really useful sense for an internist.

Also, it tickles.

K’kk’jk’ooOOoo was a specialist in fox interface problems, and she’d been brought in to figure out how to fix the malfunctioning connections in my much-abused one, or replace it if necessary. The rest of my body was already fixed. They’d grown me a new liver and colon while I was asleep in a tank. Good idea. Who wants to be awake for that?

The first thing I asked about was the Baomind, and I was assured that rescue operations were under way. The first wave of Baomind mirror disks had actually been elected by the collective for evacuation and brought to the Core huddled inside the white coils of the Prize and the other ships in the rescue fleet. More ships were en route to bring back the next wave, and as far as anybody could tell from this far away, its primary had not exploded.

Yet.

But any minute now.

The second thing I asked about was getting the war crime removed from my dermis. K’kk’jk’ooOOoo told me regretfully that she didn’t think it could be done without killing me. I hoped she was telling the truth, and it wasn’t just that the Synarche wanted to study me. I mean, of course the Synarche wanted to study me. I hoped they might be close enough to what I still hoped they were not to lie to me about it.

There were good surprises, too, and the best surprise was that Singer was here, in the hospital. He was functioning as a subsidiary wheelmind, operating systems in human resources and logistics, as a compassionate gesture. When I was well enough, we were both to be seconded to the Prize investigation team: me as an engineer, and he would take over as the Prize’s permanent shipmind. Along with our cats.

We’d be stationed right here in the Core. And not too far from Connla, who had a new job flying ambulance ships.

He was really happy about it. You get to go as fast as you want, and other vessels are supposed to get out of your way but are bad enough at it that the flying is challenging.

And apparently, he was good.

♦ ♦ ♦

After many boring medical adventures, it turned out that the problem wasn’t the fox at all, but the connections.

Functional connections in the brain are based on use. The longer my fox spent as a doorstop, the more the brain-device connections had degraded. Therefore, I needed more therapy and practice afterward before I could work with it properly again.

So playing immersion games in my fox was . . . technically . . . part of my mandated therapy.

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