A Learning Experience

Chapter Twenty-Eight

New York, USA

Mariko had always wanted to be a doctor. It had been an obsession of hers ever since her father had introduced her to Doctor Who, even though she hadn’t been entirely clear on what a doctor did at the time. As she grew older, her enthusiasm had refused to fade, even after she discovered that actually working as a doctor brought unpleasant risks in ligation-prone America. Sometimes, someone died, no matter what the doctor did to prevent it. And then the doctor would be sued by the grieving relatives. It had been a relief to leave the big cities for the countryside, where people were generally more sensible, and fall in love with a man who didn’t mind her working as a vet rather than a doctor.

But she’d never lost her desire to help people. The alien technology worried her — an autodoc could become the most effective torture machine in history — but it also galvanised her to use it to save lives. She’d had to watch too many people die through untreatable injuries or incurable diseases, both of which could now be handled by alien technology. It did irritate her that she didn’t have a clear idea how most of the technology worked, but in the long run she had faith in Steve and his friends to solve the mysteries. For the moment, all that mattered was that it did work.

The clinic had once belonged to a doctor who, like her, had abandoned the city in the wake of soaring healthcare costs and laws written for the benefit of the lawyers, rather than doctors or their patients. She hadn’t been too surprised to discover that it had been shut down, rather than the city finding another doctor. It was just the sort of stupid decision that came from having more concerns about money than public health. Or control, for that matter. The medical authorities hated it when someone challenged their control.

She smiled to herself as she watched the next set of patients entering the waiting room and take a seat. Some of them were wealthy enough to pay the fees — she’d had bankers, lawyers and politicians pass through her clinic over the past two weeks — and others were children, unable to comprehend what was happening to them. Her heart broke a little every time she saw them and, despite the suggestions she should concentrate on paying clients first, she tried to make sure the children were healed quickly and efficiently. Few dared to complain, at least openly. The last time someone had, she’d ordered him flung out of the clinic and told never to come back.

“All right,” she called. “Send in the first patient.”

A young girl entered, half-carried by her mother. The AMA hadn’t quite finished running through its stockpile of delaying tactics, but it didn’t really matter. Alien tech could scan a body quicker than Mariko could read a medical file, allowing her to both diagnose and cure the disease in one fell swoop. Mariko examined the girl, decided she was about eight years old, then motioned for her to climb up on the bed and lie down. Judging from her appearance, her father was either white or Hispanic. The mother was very definitely black.

“They said there was nothing they could do for her,” the mother said, tearfully. “She wasn’t important or wealthy.”

Mariko looked at the scan results and nodded in understanding. The girl was suffering from AIDS, which suggested that one or both of her parents also had the disease. A quick glance revealed no evidence of abuse, let alone rape; she gritted her teeth, then keyed the machine to produce the cure. Given the right treatment, AIDS could be held in remission indefinitely, but those treatments were expensive. Who was going to offer them to such a poor child?

“You’ll need treatment too,” she said. Up close, the girl’s mother didn’t look very good either. “I’ll scan you too, then prepare treatment. What happened to her father?”

“I have no fucking idea,” the woman snarled. The hatred in her voice was overlaid by misery. “He just up and left. Doesn’t even know he has a daughter.”

Mariko sighed. The woman could have requested help, but that would have resulted in a long series of intrusive questions from the administrators. Mariko had dealt with social workers before; some of them were good and decent people, doing their best for their charges, but others seemed to assume they had licence to pick apart their charges’ lives. Big Sister, with all the power and almost no accountability. Who were the poor and destitute going to complain to, faced with the might of the federal bureaucracy?

“No, probably not,” she said. She picked up a scanner and pressed it against the woman’s arm, then nodded as she saw the results. Her HIV hadn’t yet become AIDS, but it would soon enough. “What do you do for a living?”

The woman glowered, but said nothing.

Prostitute, Mariko thought. She produced two pills, one of which she passed to the girl. She hesitated, eying it doubtfully, then swallowed. Mariko gave her a glass of water, then passed the other pill to the mother. It would, assuming that everything went well, cure her completely. But it would do her no good if she went out and caught it again.

“I’d like you both to wait two weeks, then take one of these a day for the next week,” she said, reaching into a cabinet to produce the immune boosters. “If either of you show any reaction to the first set of treatments, come back here at once. But you shouldn’t.”

She looked down at the girl. They were always cute at that age, she knew, remembering her own daughter. But with AIDS it was unlikely — it had been unlikely — that she would have reached twenty before she died. And, given her circumstances, by then she would probably have slipped into prostitution like her mother. Mariko wanted to take her away from it all, but to where? She pulled the mask of dispassion over her face, refusing to admit to her feelings. Later, she knew she would curl up in bed and cry.

“Good luck,” she said, as she helped the girl off the table. “Come back if you have any problems.”

The girl hugged her, then followed her mother out of the examination chamber. Mariko took a long moment to gather herself, then called for the next patient. He was a balding middle-aged man, who seemed surprisingly dignified despite his illness. A quick check revealed that he had paid his fee without fuss, so Mariko scanned him quickly. He was suffering from a nasty form of cancer that would be hard for human technology to remove.

“Stay still,” she said, as she pressed a piece of alien technology against his head. “This will only take a few minutes.”

She shook her head in awe as the cancer was rapidly broken down into harmless debris, which would be expelled from the body soon enough. The man — he turned out to be a Wall Street Stockbroker — thanked her loudly, then offered whatever help she required to make the clinic a success. Mariko thanked him for the offer, then sent him out and called for the next client. The small boy who entered looked thoroughly miserable.

“He’s been behaving oddly all year,” his mother said. Her voice was frustrated enough to convince Mariko not to snap at her for bringing an undiagnosed patient to her clinic. “He won’t take a bath, he’s been throwing screaming fits whenever we go out and he’s… well, he’s been trying to harm himself. I really don’t know what’s wrong with him!”

Mariko was starting to have a very nasty idea. The way the boy cringed away from her was worrying, despite her decidedly non-threatening appearance. And not taking a bath… she could smell him from several metres away. Hell, that might have been why her receptionist had sent the mother and her son in as soon as possible. His smell would have been very unpleasant in small quarters.

“Let me see,” she said, and scanned him. There was surprisingly little overt damage, at least on the surface, but there were quite a few internal telltale scans. She carefully adjusted the scanner so it was covertly scanning the mother, then looked up at her. “Do you have any idea what might be wrong with him?”

“No,” the mother said. The scanner indicated she was telling the truth. “We wanted to take him to a psychologist, but they cost…”

“You should take him to the police,” Mariko said, sharply. It was her duty as a doctor to report signs of abuse. If the woman didn’t take her kid, Mariko would have to make a report herself. “Someone has been abusing him.”

The mother’s mouth dropped open. “But…”

Mariko sighed. She’d seen child abuse before and quite a few parents missed the signs completely. The problems normally built up over time, so the parents overlooked them as they materialised, while an outsider saw them at once.

“He’s trying to make himself unattractive,” she said, bluntly. “That’s why he refuses to wash. Maybe that alone wouldn’t be significant” — she’d once come across a girl who’d read The Witches and refused to take baths for several months — “but there are other worrying signs. One of them are internal scars in his anus. Something forced a penis or a finger in there.”

She carefully copied her results onto a USB stick, then passed it to the stunned woman. “Go to the police,” she said, as she healed the damage. There would be a permanent record for the police, even though there would be no physical damage any longer. “Find out who did this to him and make them pay.”

It didn’t sound like it was the father, thankfully, she noted as she called for an escort for the woman and her child. If the boy wanted to go with his parents, it suggested the real cause of the problem was the babysitter… if there was a babysitter. A girl, perhaps; it was quite possible that the boy had flinched from Mariko because his abuser was also a girl. She watched them go, then sunk down on her chair and put her head in her hands. There were times when she really hated being a doctor.

“Poor bastard,” she muttered.

There were things she could do, she knew. She could offer to transport them to the moon, if the husband had skills the colony could use. Or she could erase memories from the boy’s mind, allowing him to grow up without having his development stunted. Or… perhaps she could track down the abuser herself and ensure that Steve and a few of his friends administered some very real justice. But she knew she couldn’t do any of them.

She stared down at her hands for a long moment, then stood and called for the next patient.

Abdul Al-Kareem had never really expected to get the call. He and his brothers had been inserted into America five years ago and told to be American in every way they could, as long as it didn’t compromise their ability to do the mission when the time came. They’d opened an Iranian restaurant, introduced thousands of Americans to the joys of Iranian food and generally acted like model Americans. Abdul himself had a steady stream of relationships, while one of his brothers had married an American girl and the other had a steady relationship going that might turn into marriage. There had been no reason to expect that the world would turn upside down.

But it had. He’d seriously thought about refusing, when the message finally arrived, but he knew there was no escape. Agents had gone native before, he’d been told, and they’d always been betrayed. The lives they’d built for themselves would be shattered, whatever happened, and they’d never be able to resume them. All they could do was serve their home country and pray they managed to escape there before the Americans reacted.

He parked the van near the clinic and glanced back at his two brothers. Both of them had been trained intensely for covert operations and urban insurgencies — it would have seriously upset the Americans if they’d realised that all three brothers were veterans of the Iraq War, Iranians who’d fought on the other side — and knew just how to act. Besides, New York might take terrorists seriously, but America was still an open society. It would take time for them to clamp a ring of steel around New York and, by then, he hoped to have their target well and truly out of the city.

“God is Great,” he said, softly.

He saw the look in his brother’s eye and cringed, inwardly. They’d all been tempted by America, but Abdullah had truly fallen. His wife and children would not get out of the city, no matter what happened. They knew nothing about Abdullah’s past or his secret mission, but the American authorities wouldn’t take it into account. Abdullah’s family would be very lucky if they didn’t vanish into a secret prison where they’d be tortured, then murdered. It had happened before.

“Don’t worry,” he said. It was a lie, but it had to be said. Somehow, he doubted Abdullah would ever see his family again. “We’ll get them out too.”

Abdullah eyed him nastily, then opened the case at his feet. It hadn’t been hard to sneak the weapons into the city, let alone the high explosives they’d bought for the diversion. He’d thought about trying to purchase additional weapons from American sources, but there was too much chance of running into either a patriotic gun dealer or an FBI sting operation. That, too, had happened before.

It had surprised him, when he’d gone to look at the clinic two days ago, that there was almost no security at all. The Americans were truly a proud folk. But, given the capabilities of their new technology, perhaps it wasn’t that surprising. They probably thought they could teleport their people out before it was too late. And if the Americans were right, Abdul knew, his team was about to expose itself and destroy their American lives for nothing.

He picked up the cell phone and pushed a button. “Open the doors,” he ordered. “Go.”

The explosions bellowed out in the distance as he jumped out of the vehicle, followed rapidly by Abdullah. Americans, New Yorkers with long memories of terrorism, scattered as he fired a handful of shots above their heads, then crashed into the clinic. He bellowed orders for the Americans to get down on the ground — better they believed it to be a simple hold-up as long as possible — and led the way into the inner room. The doctor was easy to recognise, thanks to the endless newspaper articles on her. She was Japanese-American, surprisingly short compared to her famous husband…

And she was reaching for something at her belt. Abdul threw himself at her and slammed a fist into her face, knocking her to the ground. The device, whatever it was, fell and hit the ground with a sharp crash. Abdul searched her rapidly, depositing everything she was carrying on the ground, then picked her up and fled back into the waiting room, tossing a handful of incendiary grenades behind him. If they were really lucky, the assumption would be that the doctor had died in the fire, rather than kidnapped, although he wasn’t holding out any hope. The Americans were experts at forensic science.

He’d feared Americans trying to stop them, but the explosions and gunfire seemed to have left the witnesses thoroughly unmanned. No one tried to bar their path as they jumped back into the van. Amir, who had kept the engine idling over while his two brothers raided the clinic, gunned the vehicle forward as soon as they slammed the doors closed. Abdul let out a sigh of relief, then carefully searched the doctor again, resisting the temptation to grope her small breasts. This time, he found nothing.

“Tie her hands,” Abdullah suggested. “And pray the van performs as advertised.”

Abdul nodded and bent down to secure the doctor’s arms behind her back. The delay had been caused by the need to prepare the van for its mission. If their intelligence was accurate, no one could teleport through a haze of electronic static — or, they hoped, spy on them. The Taliban leadership had relied on stealth rather than heavy shielding and paid for it. If the intelligence was accurate, they had a chance of getting away. But if the intelligence was inaccurate…

“Poor little thing,” Abdullah suggested, as the van moved through panicky streets. They’d have to change vehicles before they headed down to the docks. The explosions might have shocked the NYPD, but it wouldn’t be long before they realised they were nothing more than a diversion. “She doesn’t deserve this.”

“That’s the American in you talking,” Abdul snapped. “Have you forgotten what we are?”

But they’d had to, he knew. They couldn’t afford to comport themselves like strict Muslims, not when it would draw attention. They’d grown lax, relaxing into American ways, eating pork and drinking alcohol. But it was time to put such things aside and remember what they were.

He put his hand on his brother’s shoulder. “You are an elite member of a special unit, fighting an age-old war,” he reminded him. “I would suggest you kept that in mind at all times.”

The thought made him scowl. If their handlers realised that Abdullah was having problems, it would be unlikely he would ever be allowed to leave home again. Instead, if he were lucky, he would be permanently retired. And if he were unlucky…

“Besides, we’re committed now,” he added. “But then, we always were.”