The Death of Sleep (6 page)

"Ccccccooooooouuuurrrrr . . . aaaaaaaaggggggeee . . .
Ssssuurrrrrr . . . vvvviiiiiiiivvvveee . . . ."it said, when she approached.

"Courage? Survive? What does that mean?" she demanded, but the pyramid of stone said nothing more. It glided slowly away. She wanted to run after it and ask it to clarify the cryptic speech. Theks were known for never wasting a word, especially not on explanation to simple ephemerals such as human beings.

"I suppose it meant that to be comforting," Lunzie decided. "After all, it saved my life, leading that young miner to where my capsule was lodged. But why in the Galaxy didn't it rescue me sooner, if it knew where I was?"

In her assigned room, Lunzie made herself comfortable in the deep, cushiony chair before the cubicle's computer screen. She glanced occasionally at the bunk, freshly made up with sweet-smelling bedding, but avoided touching it as if it was her dreaded enemy. Lunzie wasn't in the least sleepy, and there was still that nagging fear at the back of her mind that she would never wake up again if she succumbed.

Better to clear her brain with some useful input. Once she had run through the user's tutorial, she began systematically to go through the medical journals in Descartes library. She made a database of all the articles on new topics she wanted to read about. As she pored over her choices, she felt more and more lost. Everything in her field had advanced beyond her training.

As promised, Stev Banus had sat down with her and discussed the credits owed to her by Descartes. It amounted to a substantial balance, well over a million. He recommended that she take it and go back to school. Stev told Lunzie that a position with Descartes was still open, if she wanted to take it. Even without up-to-date training, he felt that Lunzie would be an asset to his staff. With refresher courses under her belt, she could be promoted to department head under Stev's administration.

"We can't restore the years to you, but we can try to make you happy now you're here," he offered.

Lunzie was flattered, but she wasn't certain what to do. She resented having her life interrupted so brutally. She needed to come to terms with her feelings before she could make a decision. Stev's suggestion to seek further education made sense, but Lunzie couldn't make a move until she knew what had happened to Fiona. She went back to the file of medical abstracts and tried to drive away her doubts.

Chapter Three

"Did you sleep well?" Satia asked Lunzie the next morning. The intern leaned in through the door to Lunzie's cubicle and waved to get her attention.

Lunzie turned away from the computer screen and smiled. "No. I didn't sleep at all. I spent half the night worrying about Fiona, and the other half trying to get the synthesizer unit to pour me a cup of coffee. It didn't understand the command. How can I get the unit fixed?"

Satia laughed, "Oh, coffee! My grandmother told me about coffee when I was off-platform, visiting her on Inigo. It's very rare, isn't it?"

Lunzie frowned. "No. Where, or rather when, I come from it's as common as mud. And sometimes has a similar taste. . . . Do you mean to say you've never heard of coffee?" She felt her heart sink. So much had changed over the lost decades, but it was the little things that bothered her most, especially when they affected a lifelong habit. "I usually need something to help me wake up in the morning."

"Oh, I've
heard
of coffee. No one drinks it any more. There were studies decrying the effects of the heavy oils and caffeine on the nervous and digestive systems. We have peppers now."

"Peppers?" Lunzie wrinkled her nose in distaste. "As in capsicum?"

"Oh, no. Restorative. It's a mild stimulant, completely harmless. I drink some nearly every morning. You'll like it." Satia stepped to the synth unit in the wall of Lunzie's quarters, and came back with a full mug. "Try this."

Lunzie sipped the liquid and felt a pervasive tingle race through her tissues. Her body abruptly forgot that it had just spent an entire shift cramped in one position. She gasped. "That's very effective."

"Mm— Sometimes nothing else will get me out of bed. And it leaves behind none of the sour aftertaste my grandmother claimed from coffee."

"Well, here's to my becoming acclimated to the future." Lunzie raised her cup to Satia. "Oh, that reminds me. The gizmos in the lavatory have me stumped. I figured out which one was the waste-disposer unit, but I haven't the faintest idea what the others are."

Satia laughed again. "Very well. I ought to have thought of it before. I will give you the quarter-credit tour."

Once Lunzie had been shown how to work the various conveniences, Satia punched up a cup of herbal tea for them both.

"I don't understand these newfangled things perfectly yet, but at least I know what they do," Lunzie said, wryly self-deprecating.

Satia sipped tea. "Well, it's all part of the future, designed to make life easier. So the advertisements tell us. My friend, what are you going to do with your future?"

"The way I see it, I have two choices. I can search for Fiona, or I can take refresher courses to fit me to practice medicine in this century, and then try to find her. I had the computer research information for me on discoveries that were just breaking when I went into cold sleep. Progress has certainly been made. Those breakthroughs are now old hat! I feel like a primitive thrust into a city without even the vocabulary to ask for help."

"Perhaps you can stay and study with me. I am completing my internship here with Dr. Banus. I may do my residency off-platform, so as to give me a different perspective in the field of medicine. Specifically, I am studying pediatrics, a field that is becoming ever so important recently—we're having quite a population explosion on the Platform. Of course, that would mean leaving my children behind, and that I do not wish to do. Nonya's three, and Omi is only five months old. They're such a joy, I don't want to miss any of their childhood."

Lunzie nodded sadly. "I did the very same thing, you know. I'm not sure what I want to do, yet. I must work out where to begin."

"Well, come with me first." Satia rose and placed her cup in the disposer hatch for the food processor. "Aiden, the Tri-D technician, told me he wanted to talk to you." Lunzie put her cup aside and hastened after Satia.

"I sent your query to Tau Ceti last shift, Doctor," the technician said, when they located him at the Communications Center. "It'll take several weeks to get a reply out here in the rockies. But I wanted to tell you—" The young man tapped a finger on the console top, impatiently trying to stir his memory. "I think I've seen your surname before. I noticed it, I forget where . . . in one of the news articles we've received recently. Maybe it's one of your descendants?"

"Really?" Lunzie asked with interest. "Please, show me. I'm sure I have great-nieces and -nephews all over the galaxy by now."

Aiden keyed in an All-Search for the day's input from all six beacons. "Here it comes. Watch the field." The word "Mespil" in a very clear, official-looking typestyle, coalesced in the Tri-D forum, followed by ", Fiona, MD, DV."
Other words in the same font formed around it, above and below.

"My daughter! That's her name. Satia, look! Where is she, Aiden?. What's this list?" Lunzie demanded, searching the names. "Is there video to go with it?"

The technician looked up from his console, and his expression turned to one of horror. "Oh, Krims, I'm sorry. Doctor, that's the FSP list. The people who were reported missing from the pirated Phoenix colony."

"No!" Satia breathed. She moved to support Lunzie, whose knees had gone momentarily weak. Lunzie gave her a grateful look, but waved her away, steady once again.

"What happens to people who were on planets that have been pirated?" she asked, badly shaken, trying not to let her mind form images of disaster. Fiona!

The young man swallowed. Bearing bad news was not something he enjoyed, and he desperately wanted to give this nice woman encouragement. She had been through so much already. He regretted that he hadn't checked out his information before sending for her. "Sometimes they turn up with no memory of what happened to them. Sometimes they are found working in other places, no problems, but their messages home just went astray. It happens a lot in galactic distant communications; nothing's perfect. Mostly, though, the people are never heard from again."

"Fiona can't be dead. How do I find out what became of her? I must find her."

The technician looked thoughtful. "I'll call Security Chief Wilkins for you. He'll know what you can do."

Chief Wilkins was a short man with a thin gray mustache that obscured his upper lip, and black eyes that wore a guarded expression. He invited her to sit down in his small office, a clean and tidy cubicle that said much about the mind of the man who occupied it. Lunzie explained her situation to him, but judged from his knowing nods that he knew all about her already.

"So what are you going to do?" he asked.

"I'm going to go look for her, of course," she said firmly.

"Fine, fine." He smiled. "Where? You've got your back pay. You have enough money to charge off anywhere in the galaxy you wish and back again. Where will you begin?"

"Where?" Lunzie blinked. "I . . . I don't know. I suppose I could start at Phoenix, where she was last seen. . . ."

Wilkins shook his head, and made a deprecatory clicking sound with his tongue. "We don't know that for certain, Lunzie. She was expected there, along with the rest of the colonists."

"Well, the EEC should know if they arrived on Phoenix or not."

"Good, good. There's a start. But it's many light years away from here. What if you don't find her there? Where next?"

"Oh." Lunzie sank back into the chair, which molded comfortably around her spine. "You're quite right. I wasn't thinking about
how
I would find her. All her life, I was able to walk to any place she might be. Nothing was too far away." In her mind, she saw a star map of the civilized galaxy. Each point represented at least one inhabited world. It took weeks, months, or even years to pass between some of those star systems, and searching each planet, questioning each person in every city. . . . She hugged her elbows, feeling very small and helpless.

Wilkins nodded approvingly. "You have ascertained the first difficulty in a search of this kind: distance. The second is time. Time has passed since that report was news. It will take more time to send out inquiries and receive replies. You must begin at the other end of history, and find out where she's been. Her childhood home, records of marriage or other alliances. And she must have had an employer at one time or another in her life. That will give you clues to where she is now.

"For example, why was she on that planetary expedition? As a settler? As a specialist? An observer? The EEC has records. You may have noticed"—here Wilkins activated the viewscreen on his desk and swiveled the monitor toward Lunzie—"that her name is followed by the initials MD and DV."

Lunzie confronted the FSP list once more, trying to ignore the connotation of disaster. "MD. She's a doctor. DV—" Lunzie searched her memory. "That denotes a specialty in virology."

"So she must have gone to University somewhere, too. Good. You would have wanted her to opt for Higher Education, I am sure. What did she do with her schooling? You have a great many clues to work with, but it will take many months, even years, for answers to come back to you. The best thing for you to do is to establish a permanent base of operations, and send out your queries."

"Stev Banus suggested I go back to school and update myself."

"A valid suggestion. While you're doing that, you'll also be accomplishing your search. If one line of questioning becomes fruitless, start others. Ask for help from any agency you think might be of use to you. Never mind if they duplicate your efforts. It is easier to have something you might have missed noticed by a fresh, non-involved mind. And it will be less expensive than running out to investigate prospects by yourself. It will be a costly search in any case, but you won't be in the thick of it, trying to make sense out of your incoming information without the perspective to consider it."

"I do need perspective. I've never had to deal on such a vast basis before. Her father and I corresponded regularly while she was growing up. It simply never occurred to me to think about the transit time between letters, and it was a long time! It's faster to fly FTL, but for me to think of traveling all that distance to a place, when I might not find her at the end of the journey . . . Fiona is too precious to me to allow me to think clearly. Thank you for your clear sight." Lunzie stood up. "And, Wilkins? Thank you for not assuming that she's dead."

"You don't believe she is. One of your other clues is your own insight. Trust it." The edges of the thin mustache lifted in an encouraging smile. "Good luck, Lunzie."

The child-care center was full of joyful chaos. Small humans chased other youngsters around the padded floor, shouting, careening off foam-core furniture, and narrowly missing the two adults who crouched in one of the conversation rings, trying to stay out of the way.

"Vigul!" Satia cried. "Let go of Tlink's tentacle and he will let go of your hair. Now!" She clapped her hands sharply, ignoring the disappointed "Awwwwww" from both children. She relaxed, but kept a sharp eye on the combatants. "They are normally good, but occasionally things get out of hand."

"They're probably acting up in the presence of a stranger—me!" Lunzie said, smiling.

Satia sighed. "I'm glad the Weft parents weren't around to see that. He's so young, he doesn't know yet that it's considered bad manners by his people to shape-shift in public. I'd rather that he learn to be himself with other children. It shows that he trusts them. That's good."

Beside Lunzie in his cot, Satia's infant son Omi twisted and stretched restlessly in his sleep. She picked up the infant and cradled him gently against her chest, his head resting on her shoulder. He subsided, sucking one tiny fist stuffed halfway into his mouth. Lunzie smiled down at him. She remembered Fiona at that age. She'd been in medical school, and every day carried the baby with her to class. Lunzie joyed in the closeness of the infant cradled in the snuggle pack, heartbeat to heartbeat with her. That perfect little life, like an exotic flower, that she'd created. The teachers made smiling reference to the youngest class member, who was often the first example of young humankind that an alien student ever encountered. Fiona was so good. She never cried during lectures, though she fretted occasionally in exams, seeming to sense Lunzie's own apprehension. Harshly, Lunzie put those thoughts from her mind. Those days were gone. Fiona was an adult. Lunzie must learn to think of her that way,