Dream Called Time (2 page)

PART ONE

Today

One

Into whatever houses I enter, I will go for the benefit of the sick.

—Hippocrates

Hippocrates never had to deal with a patient like mine, or he’d have said to hell with his oath and run for the hills.

As I was currently on the
Sunlace
, a Jorenian interstellar star vessel, I didn’t have hills or that luxury. What I did have was a body on the exam table in front of me: Terran, adult female, petite, thin, pale-skinned, and dark-haired. Uninjured but unconscious, waiting to be awakened, to be healed, to be saved.

Standing there in the cold, sterile brightness of the medical assessment room, dependent on the kindness of a bunch of strangers, I could relate.

Visually speaking, the patient did not appear to be a sterling example of her gender or her species. I’d never call her pretty, shapely, vibrant, or attractive. She didn’t have the benefit of physical symmetry; her long-fingered, narrow hands appeared overly large for her bony wrists; her long torso seemed at odds with her short legs. Her translucent skin didn’t have a mark on it, which made it look like a too-tight envirosuit, and displayed in outline a bit too much of her skeletal structure. Although I knew her to be in her midthirties, at first glance I’d have guessed her to be a moderately undernourished adolescent.

I picked up her chart. “Not much to look at, is she?” The herd of tall, blue-skinned Jorenian interns and nurses gathered around the table didn’t respond. “Until we open the really boring package, and get a look at all the prizes inside.”

“Healer, what say we summon your bondmate?” That came from a gorgeous female nurse whose name I didn’t know. She wove her fingers through the air as she spoke in the eloquent hand gestures her species used as part of their language. “He would wish to be present.”

I watched her white-within-white eyes, which were not at all as blind as they appeared. “Do you think I need my husband to hold my hand while I assess this patient, Nurse?”

She was two feet taller than me and a hundred pounds heavier, and could probably snap my neck with one jerk of her beautiful blue wrist, but she shuffled her feet and ducked her head like a scolded kid. “No, Healer.”

“Good answer.” I turned my attention back to the patient. “The Terran female here presents with a genetically enhanced immune system which renders her impervious to infection and disease,” I said, not bothering to read from the chart. “Any injury she sustains, including the life-threatening variety, heals in a matter of hours. Her brain capacity is estimated to be several hundred times that of an average Terran, and includes exceptional intelligence, eidetic memory, and select superior motor skills.” I glanced at the dismayed faces across from me. “Any of you know how she was created?”

This time one of the male interns spoke up. “Her parent replicated his own cells and genetically enhanced them to change her gender as well as her physiology.”

“That’s correct. You get to skip the pop quiz I’m giving later.” I placed the chart back in the holder at the end of the exam table. “The end result was Dr. Cherijo Grey Veil, cloned and refined and engineered from birth to be the perfect physician. Would anyone like to take a stab at diagnosing her current condition?” I showed them some of my teeth. “I’m dying to know what it is.”

“She is violating an order of bed rest,” a low voice said from behind me.

I glanced back at the Senior Healer. Three- armed, one-legged, pink-hided with a bald head and a nest of white, thin, prehensile, meter- long gildrells around his mouth, the Omorr surgeon was my best friend and one of my oldest colleagues.

Judging by the flush currently darkening his features, he was also as pissed off as I was.

“Don’t forget appropriating medical staff and using diagnostic equipment without proper authorization,” I reminded him. “Nice to see you, Senior Healer. They told me you were on Joren.” Although how he got there, I had no clue.

“I was. I jaunted out on a scout to meet the ship. Leave us,” Squilyp said to the others as he hopped around to stand on the opposite side of the table.

Suppressing various expressions, gestures, and sounds of relief, the interns and nurses almost trampled one another trying to get out of the entry panel.

The Omorr smelled a little like bile, and looked tired, or older—or maybe both. A lot of things had changed, and I didn’t know why, but I was about to find out.

Or else.

“How many transitions did it take for you to get here,” I asked, “and how many times did you puke?”

“Seven jumps,” he said. “I vomited twice. What are you doing?”

“I’m putting together a workup on Dr. Grey Veil here.” Or, at least, the dimensional image of her. I was the original, the prototype, the living, breathing version of the simulated woman who currently lay on my exam table, naked and flat on her back. My back. Whatever. “I thought it might be helpful in finding out what the hell is going on, since no one is telling me anything.”

He started to say something, and then changed his mind. “You were advised to stay in your berth.”

“I’ll be happy to do that. Just as soon as I know how I got on this ship, where it is, who swapped out the crew, and what happened to my injuries.”

“You don’t remember?”

I folded my arms. “What do you think?”

“What have you been told?”

“Basically? Nothing. Every time I ask, they railroad me with some nonsense about psychological trauma. They removed nearly all the entries from my chart, and I’ve been locked out of the medical database.” I brushed aside a thick section of her/our hair, creating a part along one side of her/our head. “Is this where I got conked? How bad was it?”

“I cannot say.” He glanced at the simulation to avoid looking at me. “We were not present when you were injured, and the damage healed before you were recovered.”

Obviously, or now I’d be leaking blood or brain matter all over the deck. “Then show me what you extrapolated from my scans after you took me back from the League.”

“I do not have all the details on the incident—”

“God
damn
it, Squilyp.” The last shred of my patience finally parted ways with my temper. “Tell me what the hell happened to me.”

Shouting at him stiffened his gildrells into icicles—a sure sign he was offended—but he only addressed the control console. “Display program variation C-1.”

Like an invisible killer with an unseen ax, the imager erased a good chunk of my twin’s skull, vaporizing the bone and exposing the brain tissue. It was such a brutal injury that for a moment I forgot to breathe.

How could I have survived this?
I felt ready to puke myself now. Thanks to my enhanced immune system, I could physically survive almost anything, but mentally . . . emotionally . . . “That’s what that League pirate did to me?”

“Based on the initial head series I performed, and the few details we were able to garner from one eye-witness, this approximates the wound you sustained after your transport crash-landed on the surface of Akkabarr.”

I glanced up. “What are you talking about? I wasn’t anywhere near Akkabarr. I was on that dinky Rilken ship. One of Shropana’s jackasses boarded it before he smacked me in the head with the end of a pulse rifle.” I regarded the simulation again. “There’s no way he did this much damage, unless he kept bashing my skull in after I fell unconscious.”

“That is the last thing you remember?” he asked. “Being assaulted on the Rilken ship?”

“That’s the last thing that happened to me.” I didn’t like the careful way he was talking to me. “Right?”

“Ah, no.” His gildrells coiled into knots of agitation. “You were abducted and taken to Akkabarr by a League operative, but the atmospheric conditions caused your transport to crash on the surface. There you were attacked by a group of natives, and shot.” He touched the control panel, creating a second, independent image of the brain and projecting the ruined organ above the body, where it slowly revolved. “Due to the weapon being fired at almost point-blank range, it caused considerable damage to the brain center, as well as significant vascular trauma and a substantial amount of tissue destruction.”

I resisted the urge to touch my head. “You’re telling me that after this League ship I was on crashed, the natives dragged me out of the wreckage, shot me in the head, and blew out half of my brains.” He nodded, and I took in a shaky breath. “Any particular reason
why
?”

“As it was explained to me,” he said, “they wished to kill and partially dismember you in order to collect a bounty from their masters.”

“
Partially
dismember?” I almost shrieked.

“They skin the faces of unauthorized intruders,” he explained, “which they trade for various rewards from their masters.”

“Remind me never to jaunt to Akkabarr again.” Not that I’d wanted to go in the first place. I took another good look at the holoimage. “What happened after that?”

“I cannot be certain,” he said, not looking at me again, “but scans indicate that the tissue and bone spontaneously regenerated, probably within a matter of days. It was during that time that, I believe, you entered the primary phase of an extended dissociative fugue state.”

“Getting shot in the head gave me an identity disorder.” I snickered. “Sure. Who did I think I was? A P’Kotman with clogged mouth pores?”

“No.” He seemed to be searching for words again. “Cherijo, do you recall anything else? Anything at all? Do you remember where you were or what you saw after the League soldier attacked you?”

“I woke up here, in Medical.” His expression and my lack of wounds told me that couldn’t be correct. “Squilyp, just how long was I unconscious?”

He had to try three times before he could speak. “I regret to say that you were abducted and taken to Akkabarr nearly five years ago.”

All the strength went out of my legs, and I groped for a stool. Not five days, or five weeks. Not even five months. Five
years
. Absently I heard myself ask, “Did you try to bring me out of the coma before now?”

“Cherijo.” He hopped around the exam table and bent his knee until he could look into my eyes. “There were some residual effects, but to our knowledge, you never became comatose.”

“What?” I was still trying to process what he’d said. “Okay. So, where did the five years go? Did I freeze on that ice ball or something?”

“This will be difficult for you to accept.” He wrapped the sensitive and extremely dexterous web of tissues at the end of his arms around my hands. “The attack destroyed your mind. You were lost to us.”

“I’m right here, and my mind is working perfectly,” I reminded him. “What did you do when you found me? You didn’t put me in stasis, did you? Not for five years.”

“There was no need. When we recovered you from Akkabarr, you were conscious and cognizant and functional.” He hesitated. “You had acquired another personality. An Akkabarran persona.”

I started to laugh, and just as quickly stopped. “You’re saying that I’ve been a different
person
for the last five years of my life?” He nodded. “You know, if this is some kind of sick, tasteless practical joke to get back at me for being captured by the Rilkens, I will never forgive you or anyone else involved.”

“Your memory center—along with possibly one-third of your brain tissue—was destroyed after the crash. Nothing of your personality remained.” He put his membranes on my shoulders. “You were not unconscious, Cherijo. You were gone. After we recovered you from the Iisleg, I tried everything to bring you back. When nothing worked, I had to assume that the head injury had killed you.”

“Unless you toss me into the nearest star or molecular disintegration unit, I can’t be killed, and you know it.” I rose and stepped away so that he wasn’t touching me anymore. “Try again.”

“I wish I had the answers you seek.” Squilyp reached over and switched off the imager, and the body of my twin vanished. “We must speak of what has happened since you . . . when your body was occupied by—”

Oh, no, we didn’t.

I turned and walked out into Medical Bay, letting the door shut off Squilyp’s babbling. All the nurses working that shift had stopped whatever they were doing and now stood staring at me.

They’d been doing this nonsense practically since I’d woken up. “Hello. Anyone know where my clothes are?” Silence. “How about my husband? Duncan Reever? He waiting around somewhere?”

Everyone looked at each other and then at the deck. No one said a word to me.

“Thanks a lot.” The thought of something alien occupying any part of me made my skin crawl, and I marched over to a garment storage unit and yanked out a set of scrubs.

No one tried to stop me from using the cleansing unit. Lucky them.

Showering and dressing in the scrubs calmed me down and made me feel a little more like myself, but as soon as I stepped out, I found the Omorr waiting for me.

“You cannot leave,” he said, hopping in front of me to block my path to the main door panels. “I have not discharged you.”

“You never admitted me,” I countered. “I want to see Reever. Get out of my way.”

“I understand how you must feel,” he said, until I looked him in the eye. “No, of course, I cannot imagine what this must be like for you.”

“Take a nap for sixty months,” I suggested as I tried to go around him. When he cut me off a second time, I grabbed the front of his blue and white surgeon’s tunic. “You don’t want to do this with me, Doctor. I want to see Duncan. And Marel. Right now.”

“You will, soon.” He covered my fist with his web of a hand. “I promise. All I ask is that you allow me to assure you are well, and that there is no danger of a relapse.”

“How?”

“I must examine you,” he said, and, before I could tell him what I thought of that, added, “We do not yet know if your condition is stable.”

“As long as no one tries to blow my head off again, I should be just peachy.” I wasn’t sure I’d ever go to sleep again voluntarily, but that wasn’t my immediate problem. “Where’s Reever? Why isn’t he here with me? Where is my daughter?”