Homegoing

Chapter 19

Because the Earth human body is constantly exposed to attack by organic things of all kinds from its environment, most of which would do it harm if they could, it has a complicated and very effective system of defenses. Antibodies form. Glands flood the system with prophylactic agents. The body mobilizes to defeat the attacker. The system works very well—that is why life has survived on Earth for four billion years—but sometimes the very mobilization of defense systems by itself causes fever, itching, sneezing, the formation of pimples or blisters or blotches—even syncope; even, sometimes, death. Then the syndrome is called “an allergic reaction,” and it can be more serious than the original attack.

When one of the air-evac medics took time to explain that to Sandy, he understood—more or less. What he understood best was that it was serious. It kept the medics busy. By the time the helicopter had made the ten-minute flight to Hudson City and was swooping down on the roof marked with a squared-off red cross, Marguery was shrouded in blankets, with a tube in her nose and another tube taped to a needle that entered a vein in her arm and her face mostly hidden under a mask.

She wasn’t talking, even incoherently. She was unconscious. After those first quick words of explanation, the medics weren’t talking, either, or at least not to Lysander Washington. No one paid any attention to him at all, at least not until they had pushed the wheeled stretcher Marguery was on into one elevator and hurried Lysander himself into another, with instructions to sit in the emergency waiting room—and the only attention he got then was from the other people sitting around, some with crutches, some with babies in their arms, some half asleep, some nervously pacing back and forth as they waited to hear the prognosis on their friends or relatives within.

The seats were flimsy aluminum-tubing things with canvas backs. Sandy did not want to trust his weight to them. He was more inclined to join the pacers, anyway, because the whole thing was a terrible mystery to him, and he couldn’t help feeling that in some way—what way it could possibly be he couldn’t imagine—the whole thing was his fault.

And no one would tell him anything.

A little girl in shorts and tennis shoes was staring at him, diverted from the situation comedy on the waiting-room TV screen. She had a carton of popcorn from a vending machine in her hand, but she wasn’t eating the popcorn because her thumb was in her mouth. She pulled it out long enough to ask, “Mister, are you the spaceman?”

He scowled at her. He was not in a talkative mood. “No,” he lied. Why should he be truthful when all about him deceived? “I’m, uh, just a normal Earth human waiting for my wife to have a baby.”

“I don’t think that’s so,” the child said critically, “because we go to the other side of the hospital when we come here for babies. My brother’s getting a marble out of his nose; he’s dumb. Do you want some popcorn?”

He shook his head and got up to visit the drinking fountain. He peered down the forbidden corridors of the hospital, pale green and white, with carts that bore unplugged machines and stacks of linen, and people in pale green smocks hurrying back and forth. Ignoring the girl, he went to the reception desk again. “Can you tell me anything about Marguery Darp?” he begged.

“The doctor will be with you when she can,” the receptionist said, eyeing him curiously. “There’s a film room down the hall if you’d like to watch some other kind of television while you wait.”

“Do they have decent chairs?” he asked ungraciously.

The receptionist studied his build. “They have couches, anyway. I think they’re pretty strong,” she offered.

“Then maybe I will,” Sandy growled, but what he decided to do first was to visit the men’s room. He was brooding. This world was entirely too full of unexpected crises! He was tired of being taken by surprise. It wasn’t the way he had been brought up; on the big interstellar ship you at least always knew where you stood, and if there was ever any doubt about what to do next the Major Seniors would tell you.

He did not want to face the curiosity of the people in the lounge again. When he found the film room the couch did, at least, look sturdy enough to bear him. But as soon as he sat and gazed at the screen, he was taken aback to see a familiar face. It was his old cohort-mate, Bottom! He was on a platform, just as Polly had been, and he, too was lecturing an invisible audience. Not on astronomy, of course. His topic was biological control of radioactive and toxic wastes, and he was showing microscope pictures of tiny organisms that, he said, would concentrate all the undesirables into their own bodies, simply by feeding on them, and then the little things could be harvested and disposed of. Result: clean water and soil.

Once the initial shock of seeing an old friend had worn off, Sandy decided the subject was boring. He had heard all that long since, in the buddy sessions with his cohort. It surprised him, though, that even the Earth people weren’t interested—at least, he was alone in the film room. And when finally he gave up and went back to the lounge, the TV there was still playing its sitcoms.

The little girl, however, was waiting for him. “I think you really are the spaceman,” she announced triumphantly, pointing to the door, “because if you weren’t why would that creepy thing be looking for you?”

Sure enough, Polly was galumphing toward him through the door, escorted by a uniformed hospital attendant and looking surly as always. And maybe a little surlier than usual, he decided, because it was close to her bedtime “cookies and milk” meal, and she certainly was not going to get fed in this place.

“What stupid thing have you done now, Lysander?” she demanded—speaking rudely in Hakh’hli, to exclude the humans who were giving them their full attention. “Why do I have to come running to this hospital place simply because you are once again in some sort of trouble?”

“I’m not in trouble,” Lysander said, hoping it was true. “I didn’t do anything. Marguery must—got sick,” he finished wretchedly.

“Got sick from what? I am told that you forced her to go underwater, where oxygen-breathers cannot live. That was wrong of you and not right at all! Why did you do that?”

“I certainly didn’t force her! It wasn’t my idea, anyway.”

“Was it then hers? If so, why?”

“Because she wanted a private place to tell me something. I’ve just found out that you’ve been lying to me all my life!”

Polly didn’t look offended, only interested. “And why do you say that?” she asked curiously.

“Because what you have told me about my mother was untrue and not in any way correct. She wasn’t American! Only human ship in space was Russian.”

Polly sneezed quizzically. “And you are upset about this question which is trivial and not at all important? What difference does it make? Russian, American, Chinese—they’re all Earth humans, aren’t they?”

“That difference—” he began grimly. And stopped. It occurred to him that there might be some sort of tactical advantage in concealing just how much he did know. He decided not to say anything about the gender of the Russians, and finished instead, “That difference is that you didn’t tell me what was truth.”

She looked at him with scorn. “I?”

“Yes, you. Plural you,” he amended. “You Hakh’hli! My own cohort, and everybody else, all the way up to Major Seniors, you’ve all lied to me.”

“My dear Lysander,” she said cuttingly. “Are you listening to yourself? What you say is simply contradiction in terms, for how can any Major Senior lie? What one Major Senior says is truth. If some Major Senior says one hoo’hik is not hoo’hik but Hakh’hli of tho degree, then that is so. Otherwise Major Senior would not say it.” She gave a vast yawn and then announced, “This is not useful conversation. It is more important to speak of your activities, which are not satisfactory. Why are you not listening to Bottom’s lecture on soil detoxification?”

“You’re missing it, too. He’s still talking.”

“But I know what he is to say, and you do not.”

Lysander shrugged. “The part I saw didn’t seem very interesting.”

She hissed in reproof. “How can you make such judgment? On other hand,” she said, sounding almost plaintive, “Earth humans did not seem to find it interesting either. I do not understand Earth humans. Do you know that hardly any of them have spoken to me about thruster project? It is as though they do not appreciate what great gift Hakh’hli are making to them.”

“Well,” Lysander said helpfully, “maybe they don’t see it as a gift, exactly. After all, you told them there would have to be Hakh’hli supervisors and not merely Earth humans in charge.”

“But of course there must be Hakh’hli supervisors! Who knows what Earth humans might do otherwise? They are violent and not wholly civilized, Lysander! Remember all you have learned! They are capable of converting all technology into weapons.

“How could they make railgun a weapon?” he asked reasonably.

“That would be easy and not difficult at all! They might shoot one massive capsule up very fast and ram our ship! Can you imagine what would happen in that case? And our ship could not maneuver to get away, since main engines are completely off at present.” She woofed angrily. “It could be even worse! They could send nuclear bombs, such as those they are always dropping on each other.”

“They haven’t dropped any of those for years.”

“For years!” she mimicked. “For years, only! And does not that perhaps make it time for them to use such weapons again?” She glanced over Sandy’s shoulder and made a face. “We will talk of this again if you like,” she said, “but not now. Here is my watchdog coming, and I do not wish to speak to him.”

She hobbled angrily away. To Lysander’s surprise, Hamilton Boyle seemed more interested in him than in his charge, Polly. He nodded to her as he passed, and advanced on Lysander.

“Marguery’s going to be all right,” Boyle said, patting Lysander’s shoulder reassuringly. “It looked bad. In fact it was bad; there’s no doubt that you saved her life by getting her out of there. But it’s just some kind of allergic reaction. They’ve given her histamine blockers, and she’s conscious now. I just left her.”

“I’m going to see her,” Sandy decided, turning toward the emergency room door. Boyle put a hand on his arm.

“Not just now,” he said. “She’s, uh, she doesn’t look her best right now. She’d rather wait until she’s prettier for you to see her.”

Sandy gazed up at him, making a sound that was somewhere between, “Oh, hell,” and “Oh, wow!”—as much delighted that Marguery wanted to look her best for him as he was dejected that he couldn’t go in. “What is an allergic reaction?” he asked; and when Boyle explained, he asked curiously, “But what was she allergic to?”

Boyle tamped his pipe, considering. “It could be a lot of things,” he said at last. “Mold spores, for instance. That vault’s been wet for years; it’s probably full of them. How about yourself?”

“What about myself?”

“Are you having any allergic symptoms? Things like sneezing, itching, dizziness, hoarseness—anything like that? Look, as long as you’re here, why don’t we get the medics to check you out?”

“I don’t see any reason to be checked out,” Lysander said.

“But Marguery would want you to,” Boyle assured him. “It only takes a minute to get a sample, and it doesn’t hurt.”

It took a lot longer than a minute, counting the time for dropping his pants and stretching out, face down, while a gum-chewing young woman in one of the pale green uniforms poked for a soft spot in the fleshy part of his hip; and the part about it not hurting wasn’t true, either. The pokes with the woman’s finger were only annoying—well, “disturbing” was a better word, because Sandy was very conscious of the fact that she was female and he was exposed, and he had not been touched by any other human female but Marguery in such an intimate way. But when the woman had found a spot she liked the next thing was a click and a prod and a sudden sharp stabbing feeling, as though a rattlesnake had bitten him on the butt.

Sandy rolled instinctively away, shouting in astonishment, resentment, and hurt. When he looked around he saw the woman holding up a spring-loaded needle as long as the first joint of his thumb. “Please hold still,” she ordered, annoyed. “It’s only a cell sample, after all . . . There. You can go now.”

Full of vexation, Lysander went back into the waiting room. He did not smile when he saw Hamilton Boyle standing there, puffing his pipe right under a large “No Smoking” sign. “That wasn’t too bad, was it?” Boyle asked genially.

“It was bad enough,” Lysander growled, rubbing his buttock. “Now can I see Marguery?”

Boyle shook his head regretfully: “I’m afraid not. She’s asleep, and they don’t want her disturbed.”

Lysander blinked at him, suddenly worried. “But they said she was doing well!”

“And so she is, my boy! It’s just that she’s had a close call, and so they want to keep her until they get some test results. She ought to be fine tomorrow morning. You can see her then, I’m sure—maybe even take her home.”

“Take her home?” Lysander felt a sudden glow. “That’ll be fine.” He thought for a minute, then had an inspiration. “Flowers! It is an Earth custom to send flowers to people in hospitals, isn’t it? Where does one get flowers?”

But Boyle was shaking his head, amused but tolerant. “It’s late, Sandy,” he pointed out. “The florists are all closed. You can bring some in the morning if you want to, but right now I think I ought to drive you home. My car’s in the lot.”

When they got to the car Boyle drove efficiently and fast, but when they reached the hotel he paused before getting out. ‘There’s one thing I’m kind of curious about, Sandy,” he said. “Did you see your friend Bottom’s speech on television?”

“Not really. I didn’t pay much attention.”

Boyle nodded. “Most of what he said was old stuff, if you don’t mind my saying so—we’ve done a pretty good job of working out detox systems for the soil and water ourselves. Had to, you know. There was just one little thing. Bottom said the Hakh’hli were going to start field trials themselves.”

“Yes? Why shouldn’t they?”

Boyle pursed his lips. “Perhaps there’s no reason. Only he said they wanted to do it in conjunction with the railgun project they want us to build for them. In Africa.”

Lysander shrugged. “Why not? It couldn’t do much harm there, could it?”

“But it couldn’t do much good, either, Sandy. Africa’s about the least affected continent as far as acid rain and heavy metals and so on are concerned. The Hakh’hli seem to be very interested in it, though. I wondered if you might know why?”

Lysander shook his head. “You’d have to ask ChinTekki-tho that,” he said. But as a matter of fact he had a pretty good idea what the answer would be, and an even better one that Hamilton Boyle would not get that answer from ChinTekki-tho.