The Sam Gunn Omnibus

The Hospital and the Bar

Jade’s first memories were not of people, but of the bare-walled rooms and wards of the hospital. The hushed voices. The faintly tangy smell of disinfectant. The hospital had seemed so snug and safe when she had been a child. Even though she had never had a room of her own, and had spent most of her childhood nights sleeping in the main ward, the hospital was the closest thing to a home that Jade had ever had.

She was an adult now, with a job and an apartment of her own. A single room carved deep into the lunar rock, two levels below the hospital, four levels below Selene City’s main plaza and the surface. Still, returning to the hospital was like returning to the warmth of home. Almost.

“It would be a really good thing to do,” said Dr. Dinant. She was a Belgian, and even though her native language was French, between her Walloon accent and Jade’s fragmentary Quebecois, they found it easier to converse in English.

“You mean it would be good for science,” Jade replied softly.

“Yes. Of course. For science. And for yourself, as well.”

Dr. Dinant was quite young, almost Jade’s own age. Yet she reminded Jade of the blurry memory of her adoptive mother. She felt as if she wanted this woman to love her, to take her to her heart as no one ever had since her mother had gone away from her.

But what Dr. Dinant was asking was more than Jade could give.

“All you have to do is donate a few of your egg cells. It’s quite a simple procedure. I can do it for you right here in the clinic in just a few minutes.”

Dinant’s skin was deeply tanned. She must spend hours under the sun lamps, Jade thought. The physician was not a particularly handsome woman: her mousy hair was clipped quite short and her clothes showed that she paid scant attention to her appearance. But she had an air of self-assurance that Jade sorely envied.

“Let me explain it again,” Dr. Dinant said gently. Even though the chairs they were sitting in were close enough to touch one another, she kept a distinct separation from the younger woman.

“I understand what you want,” Jade said. “You want to make a baby from my eggs so that you can test it for the bone disease I carry in my genes.”

“Osteopetrosis,” said Dr. Dinant, “is not a disease….”

“It prevents me from living on Earth.”

The doctor smiled at her kindly. “We would like to be able to see to it that your children will not be so afflicted.”

“You can cure it?”

Dr. Dinant nodded. “We believe so. With gene therapy. We can remove the defective gene from your egg cell and replace it with a healthy one, then fertilize the cell, implant it in a host mother, and bring the fetus to term.”

“My—the baby won’t have the disease?”

“We believe we can eliminate the condition, yes.”

“But not for me,” Jade said.

“No, I’m afraid it must be done in the fetal or pre-fetal stage.”

“It’s too late for me. It was too late when I was born.”

“Yes, but your children needn’t be so afflicted.”

My children? Jade pulled her gaze away from the eager-eyed doctor and glanced around the room. A bare little cell, like all the other offices in the hospital. Like all of Selene City. Buried underground, gray and lifeless, like living in a crypt.

“You must make a decision,” insisted the doctor.

“Why? Why now? I’ll marry some day. Why shouldn’t I have my own children myself?”

An uncomfortable expression crossed Dr. Dinant’s face. “Your job, up on the surface. I know they keep the radiation exposure down to acceptable levels, but…”

Jade nodded, understanding. She had heard tales about what long-term exposure to the radiation levels up on the surface could do. Even inside the armored space suits the radiation effects built up, over time. That’s why they paid a bonus for working up on the surface. She wondered if that was how she had acquired the bone disease in the first place. Was her father a worker on the surface? Her mother?

Osteopetrosis. Marble bones, it was called. Jade remembered pictures of marble statues from ancient Greece and Rome, arms broken off, fingers gone, noses missing. That’s what my bones are like; too brittle for Earth’s gravity. That’s what would happen to me.

Dr. Dinant forced a smile. “I realize that this is a difficult decision for you to make.” “Yes.”

“But you must decide, and soon. Otherwise …”

Otherwise, Jade told herself, the radiation buildup would end her chances of ever becoming a mother.

“Perhaps you should discuss the matter with your family,” the doctor suggested.

“I have no family.”

“Your mother—the woman who adopted you, she is still alive, is she not?”

Jade felt a block of ice congealing around her. “I have not spoken to my mother in many years. She doesn’t call me and I don’t call her.”

“Oh.” Dr. Dinant looked pained, defeated. “I see.”

A long silence stretched between the two women. Finally Dr. Dinant shifted uncomfortably in her chair and said, “You needn’t make your decision at just this moment. Go home, think about it. Sleep on it. Call me in a few days.”

Slowly, carefully, Jade got to her feet. “Yes. Thank you. I’ll call you in a few days.”

“Good,” said the doctor, without moving from her chair. She seemed relieved to see Jade leave her office.

Jade walked blindly down the corridors of the underground city. Men and women passed her, some nodding or smiling a hello, most staring blankly ahead. Children were still rare in Selene and if she saw any, she paid them no mind. It was too painful. The whole subject tore at her heart, reminding her again of the mother that had abandoned her, of the cold and empty life she was leading.

In those days there were only two bars in Selene City, one frequented by management types and tourists, the other the haunt of the workers. Jade found herself pushing through the crowd at the incongruously named Pelican Bar.

Friends called to her; strangers smiled at the diminutive redhead. But Jade saw and heard them only dimly.

The Pelican’s owner tended the bar himself, leaving the robots to handle anyone too much in a hurry for a joke or a story. He was a paunchy middle-aged man, gleamingly bald beneath the overhead fluorescents. He seemed to smile all the time. At least, every time Jade had seen him his face was beaming happily.

“Hey there, Green Eyes! Haven’t seen you since your birthday bash.”

Her coworkers had surprised her with a party to celebrate her twentieth birthday, several weeks earlier. Jade sat on the last stool in the farthest corner of the bar, as distant from everyone else as she could manage.

“Want your usual?”

She hadn’t been to the Pelican—or anywhere else, for that matter—often enough to know what her “usual” might be. But she nodded glumly.

“Comin’ right up.”

A guy in a tan leather vest and turquoise-cinched bolo tie pulled up the stool next to Jade’s, a drink already in his hand. He smiled handsomely at her.

“Hi, Red. Haven’t I seen you up at the landing port?”

Jade shook her head. “Not me.”

“Must be someplace else. I’m new here, just arrived last week for a year’s contract.”

Jade said nothing. The newcomer tried a few more ploys, but when they failed to get a response from her he shrugged and moved away.

The bartender returned with a tall frosted glass filled with a dark bubbling liquid and tinkling with real ice cubes.

“Here you go! Genuine Coca-Cola!”

Jade said, “Thanks,” as she took the cold sweating glass in her hand.

“You’re never gonna win the Miss Popularity contest if you keep givin’ guys the cold shoulder, y’know.”

“I’m not interested in any contests.”

The bartender shrugged. “H’m, yeah, well maybe. But there’s somebody over there—” he jabbed a thumb back toward the crowd at the other end of the bar,”—that you oughtta meet.”

“Why?”

“You were askin’ about Sam Gunn, weren’t you? Zach Bonner said you were.”

Her supervisor. “Is Zach here?” she asked..

“Naw, too early for him. But this guy here now, he was a buddy of Sam’s, back in the early days.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. You’ll see.”

The bartender waddled away, toward the crowd. When he came back, Jade saw that a compactly built gray-haired man was coming down the other side of the bar toward her, holding a pilsner glass half filled with beer in his left hand.

“Jade, meet Felix Sanchez. Felix, this is Jade. I dunno what her last name is ’cause she never told me.”

Sanchez was a round-faced Latino with a thick dark mustache. He smiled at Jade and extended his hand. She let him take hers, and for a wild moment she thought he was going to bring it to his lips. But he merely held it for several seconds. His hand felt warm. It engulfed her own.

“Such beautiful eyes,” Sanchez said, his voice so low that she had to strain to hear it over the buzz of the crowd. “No wonder you are called Jade.”

She felt herself smiling back at him. Sanchez must have been more than fifty years old, she guessed. But he seemed to be in good athletic shape beneath his casual pullover and slacks.

“You knew Sam Gunn?” Jade asked.

“Knew him? I was nearly killed by him!” And Sanchez laughed heartily while the bartender gave up all pretense of working and planted both his elbows on the plastic surface of his bar.