Crystal Healer (39 page)

Duncan nodded and twined his fingers through mine. "Time enough for a walk."

I felt like laughing and crying, but I was too relieved to be with them to do anything more than walk. The frost-covered grasses parted before us, offering a wide path of amber soil etched with scrolls of salt.

"When the universe was young, so were its people," Shon said. "They thought like children, and so they behaved. The greatest darkness, born in the most innocent of hearts."

I saw the mist wall darkening around the edges of the field, and felt the air grow cold. "We fight the darkness. We have to."

"But we are wrong," Duncan said.

I stopped and pulled my hands free to wrap my arms around my waist. "I'm cold."

"You were born on the ice," Shon reminded me. "Do you remember why?"

"No." Suddenly, deeply afraid, I turned to Reever. "I can't remember. I don't want to. Please don't make me."

"I am with you,
Waenara
." He looked over my head at Shon. "Is there no other way? I love her."

"As do I," the oKiaf said. "But there is only one path." Shon gestured toward the blackened mist. "It is time to take it."

The men walked away from me and I tried to follow, but the icy grass wrapped around my legs, holding me in place. "Duncan. Shon. Don't leave me. Please, I want to go with you."

My husband looked back and almost turned around, but Shon put his arm on his shoulders and urged him along.

"Shon, please, no. I can't lose you both." I screamed that, and Duncan's name, until the cold grass wrapped around my throat and choked off my voice.

You must heal her. Heal her.

I grabbed my head, pressing my hands against my ears to block out the sound of a million voices, all speaking in unison. I pitched over into the grass, shattering the stiff blades.

You must heal her. Heal her. Heal her.

Healer, please wake up.

Healer, please.

Healer.

I tore myself out of the dream and into consciousness. I was back in the medical bay, sitting in the isolation room. I had fallen asleep at the console.

A hum buzzed against my ears, and I turned my head to look at Reever's berth, afraid of what I would see.

A mound of Lok-Teel covered my husband's body; the largest had completely engulfed his head. Each one bulged and flexed as if they were eating him.

The Lok-Teel lived by consuming waste. If Duncan had died while I was asleep--

I wrenched myself upright and lunged at the berth, grabbing and pulling away the mold as I shouted for the nurses.

Jorenians filled the isolation room, and many hands helped me strip the Lok-Teel clinging to my husband's body. Behind me I heard a similar commotion, and I looked back to see three nurses working on Shon, who, like Duncan, was covered with the mold.

"Get them off quickly." I struggled to free the one wrapped around Reever's head, peeling it off his mouth and nose. As soon as I pulled it out of his hair, I flung it across the room and checked the ventilator junction, which had come apart from the tube in Reever's throat. I heard breathing sounds, however, and quickly removed the tube.

"He's breathing on his own." All the monitor leads had been disconnected from his body, so I groped for a scanner and passed it over his chest. His vital signs were strong and stable. Why wasn't he awake?

"Duncan." I put a hand on his cheek and stroked it. "Duncan, can you hear me? Open your eyes."

He did not respond to my voice, and I performed a cerebral scan. My readings made no sense; his brain wave activity had increased three hundred percent. Even using every synaptic connection in his head, Reever couldn't register at these levels.

I tossed aside the scanner and called for another as I checked his pupils, which dilated normally.

I had never seen such levels of brain activity in any being. The only way I could think to disrupt it was to sedate him or subject him to a bioelectric pulse. Both might send him back into a coma.

"Healer Jarn," a nurse working on Shon called. "The oKiaf is conscious."

"Watch his monitors," I told the nurse beside me, and went to the other berth, forcing a smile as I met Shon's dark gaze. "That was some nap you took."

"I feel very rested," he said, and sat up as if nothing were wrong with him. He raised his hands and turned them over. "The crystal is gone."

The scan I performed told me the same thing--not a trace of crystal remained in his blood, tissues, or bone. I glanced down to see the Lok-Teel that had been removed from his body creeping out of the room. They seemed much larger now, and moved sluggishly--as if they had eaten an enormous meal.

Somehow they had done the impossible and removed the crystal that had been killing Shon. But what had they done to Reever?

"You don't have to worry about that funerary ritual anymore," I told the oKiaf, and issued orders to run a comprehensive series of scans on him. Then I turned back to my husband. "Any change?"

"No, Healer." The nurse handed me a new scanner with a fresh set of readings. His brain wave activity remained at unimaginable levels. "Shon, if you feel well enough to get out of that berth--"

He was already standing next to me, and placed one of his paws on Reever's forehead as he closed his eyes. All of the fur on his arm stood up as a faint glow spread out over my husband's face.

I bit my lip as I watched, but after only a few moments the glow faded and Shon took away his paw.

"He is not injured or ill," the oKiaf told me. "I don't know what is causing the synaptic overload, but I can do nothing to stop it." He swayed a little.

"Get back into your berth and stay there."

Desperately, I tried again to forge a link between us, but this time instead of the blank wall, a stream of raw power shoved me back into my own head so hard I nearly blacked out.

When my head cleared, I called for a gurney. "We're moving him to the neurosurgical suite."

We shifted Duncan's body onto the gurney and I pushed it out of the isolation room. If I didn't bring his brain wave activity down to normal levels, and soon, his synapses would overload, become damaged, or even burn out.

As we moved Duncan from the gurney to the treatment table, I mentally ran through the Terran conditions I knew that caused neurotransmitter disorders. One by one I discarded their treatment options, all of which would either have no effect or were too dangerous to try on a comatose patient. I needed a noninvasive method of regulating brain waves that would not cause his higher or lower functions to be impeded or shut down.

Excessive, rapid discharge of the nerve cells . . .

Epilepsy.
"Bring the beta-wave generator over here."

The nurse gave me a bewildered look. "But, Healer, your bondmate is not suffering from insomnia."

I felt like ripping her head off, but forced myself to calm down. "Duncan's neurons are in a state of hyperactivity so elevated that he is virtually locked in one long epileptic seizure. We've got to break him out of it, and we might be able to do that by inducing artificial betas."

The nurse frowned. "A presynaptic regulator implant or control medications are the standard treatment for epilepsy."

"If he hadn't spent the last four days in a coma, I'd agree with you. And I'll be happy to debate this treatment later, when my husband isn't dying." I touched her arm. "For now, please, do as I ask."

The nurse wheeled the portable unit over to the treatment table. Together we eased the halo over Reever's skull, attached the wave emitters, and wrapped a cervical collar around his neck. To keep his brain wave activity under close watch, I also attached an EEG lead over his frontal lobe and put the readings on a display monitor above the table. The nurse calibrated the generator's controls while I placed a mouth protector over my husband's lower jaw, which would keep him from choking on or biting through his tongue. When I looked up, I saw Xonea, Shon, and the rest of the medical staff standing outside the viewer and looking in.

"Why is it that every time I tell that oKiaf to stay in his berth, he ignores me?" I asked my husband. "Have you been coaching him on how best to aggravate me?"

"The generator is ready, Healer." The nurse sounded as afraid as she looked.

I bent down and kissed Reever's brow before I stepped back from the table. "Begin with ten cycles. Initiate."

The beta-wave generator made no sound as it sent the first pulses of artificial brain waves through the emitter leads and into my husband's brain. I watched his vitals and for fluctuations in the dense lines of his synaptic activity displayed on the EEG monitor overhead, but saw no change.

"Increase to twenty cycles," I told the nurse.

At some point during the procedure, Shon came into the suite and took up position on the opposite side of the table, watching the readings with me.

"Has there been any indication of atrophy or embolism?" he asked.

I shook my head. "No damage yet. No cause for the hyperactivity, either." I told the nurse to increase the feed again and scanned for any cell loss. "Whatever is doing this isn't destroying his brain tissue. It's just taken it over. . . ." I looked at the oKiaf. "Could it be the Jxin? Are they doing this to him?"

"If they are, we cannot stop them." Shon took my scanner and passed it over Reever's body, pausing at midtorso. "There is something embedded in his sternum, just beneath the skin." He looked up at me. "It is vibrating."

I swore under my breath.

"Shut down the generator," I told the nurse, and grabbed an instrument tray. I didn't waste time with pre-surgical procedures but yanked aside the linens, baring Reever's chest. "I need a specimen container. Shon."

He nodded. "Go ahead."

I used a hand lascalpel to make a shallow incision, and then inserted a probe in the wound, searching until I felt a small, hard mass. The instrument shook in my hand as I seized and tried to extract the shard. It seemed wedged into the bone, and I swore under my breath as I worked to free it. An instant later it came free, and I pulled it out of his chest.

The nurse held the open container under the probe, and I dropped it and the crystal inside. I turned back to watch Shon heal the incision, and then looked up at the EEG monitor.

The number of lines displayed slowly began to diminish, one by one, until Reever's brain wave activity had been reduced to that of a normal sleep pattern.

"Keep him on monitor and prepare to run a chest series." My shoulders slumped as my adrenaline ran out and I felt the weight of exhaustion grinding into my bones. "If his vitals remain stable, we'll move him over to the critical-care room, and then . . . and . . ." I frowned, trying to concentrate. "Do whatever else needs to be done."

"Jarn." Shon brought a linen to me and wiped my husband's blood from my hands. "Let me see to him."

I looked up at him. "You were dying thirty minutes ago. Besides, I have a few hundred tests I have to run on you, too." If I could just remember what they were.

"I think they can wait. Come." He guided me out of the suite. "There are two berths in critical care. I think Duncan would like yours to be the first face he sees when he wakes."

So would I.

I waited until they brought Duncan to the critical-care room before I occupied the adjoining berth. The moment I did, exhaustion became my dictator and I bowed to its will. I closed my eyes, wondering if I might have another of the crystal dreams, but nothing came but blessed, mindless darkness. Later, one of the nurses told me that I had slept so deeply that I didn't move once in eighteen hours.

I woke, as Shon had promised, still looking at my husband's face. I reached across the narrow space between our berths and touched his hand, my fingers pressing against the pulse point in his wrist.

Slowly, Duncan turned his hand and covered mine. "How long have I been unconscious?"

I glanced at my wristcom. "Almost five days." I sat up, wincing as my unused muscles protested, and made my way over to him. "Do you remember anything?"

"Swap embracing the stars. Pain. Walking with you and Shon through a field of crystal." He frowned. "It must have been a dream. Your father was there."

"You had a piece of crystal lodged in your chest." I touched the place where I had cut it out of him. "When Swap died, you and Shon collapsed and went into deep comas. He did that to you, didn't he? Through the crystal."

Reever sat up and slowly shook his head. "He wasn't trying to hurt us. He was a powerful telepath, on an order I can't even begin to describe. He projected his last thoughts to the crystal, hoping it would relay them to one of us."

"His last thoughts plus the crystal could have killed you." I didn't want to know what they were. "Shon only remembers the suicide, and nothing after that."

"It wasn't Swap's fault," Reever insisted. "We are very primitive compared to him."

"Swap was a larval life-form," I said. "There is very little more primitive than that."

"Rogur live for eons. Swap came to consciousness before the Jxin formed their first tribal settlement. Suppressing his development allowed him to retain his sense of reason and awareness of other life-forms as intelligent entities. Although I could only receive his thoughts, I sensed the knowledge he possessed. He sought to understand everything he encountered, and in the end I think he did." My husband's voice fell to a near whisper. "Jarn, compared to us, Swap was like a god."

Reever might find that wondrous, but I had seen what communicating with Swap had done to his mind. My husband had come very close to having his brain fried by the telepathic powers of the worm-god. "Why would he bother trying to send a message to us, then?"

"He told me that we were wrong about the black crystal," Reever said. "It is not a disease or an enemy. It is beyond that, a part of the fabric of all things that have been or will be. The Odnallak did not create it; they only gave it form. And no matter what we do, it cannot be destroyed."

"I don't understand. Maggie said it was sleeping now, but when it wakes up, it will destroy every living being in the universe."