Well this is probably the most harebrained thing I’ve ever done, Lianna smirked. Granny’s body floated just out of reach, each limb relaxed as if in repose, though she’s surely lost consciousness by now. Her body had already begun to swell. Without the artificial atmospheric pressure inside the space station, the boiling point of her own bodily fluids would drop and her tissues would begin to swell due to gas bubbles forming in her blood and tissues. Even her face seemed blurred into a featureless mask. She knew this had been brainless even while she was doing it; she couldn’t help Granny now. Certainly she had no immunity herself. But she couldn’t have done nothing.
Yet even as she’d stepped outside the hull breach, cytoplasm oozed from her pores, pooling over her features and stretching tight to form a sort of mask over her face. Inside her skinsuit it was the same, coating her epidermis, providing at least a few minutes of insulation. She wouldn’t need more than that, assuming she could reach Granny in time.
That much was open to debate. They were floating at the same velocity, with neither of them increasing or decreasing their rates of acceleration, which meant they could float at the same rate while keeping the same distance between them forever, barring some outside force acting on them.
And then, as though Mother Kali had heeded her, Lianna sensed it, a static tingle throughout her body. Some kind of electromagnetic wave washed up from the upper atmosphere and over Granny, pushing her back towards Lianna. She wasted no time, wrapping her arms and both legs around Granny’s waist.
Now that she held her close, Lianna was able to see the bat wings stretched tight across Granny’s face. He’d probably been tucked in her bosom as always and by sheer instinct had gone to protect his ‘mother’. Good boy, Gordon, Lianna thought. Love you.
With her grip around Granny secured, Lianna pressed the transponder at the base of her right thumb. Ernie had implanted this teleport sensor years ago, in case of emergencies. If this didn’t qualify…
One. Two. Why wasn’t anything happening?
Ernie should’ve transported them back to a safe post on the space station. Don’t tell me he’s inspecting the engines—
Auroras scuttled in spiderweb patterns across the poles facing their bodies, and for a few seconds she thought she sensed a fluid motion amidst the crackle of aurora. A distant flag seemed to flap above the pole, closing on them, resolving into a manta ray riding the magnetic waves, regarding them both from no more than 2,000 meters. Even at that distance Lianna had the sense she was a mosquito staring down the nose of a ginormous space whale, awed while simultaneously insignificant.
Then their bodies dropped through space onto the deck of her ship. They kept dropping through the deck and into the space station’s infirmary.
The medibots swarmed over them, though everything seemed to occur in a kind of gauzy dream. Voices shrieking at her but she couldn’t focus on the words. The only clear sense was of the cytoplasm coating her, now sliding back into her pores, leaving her suddenly cold on the infirmary deck. Her eyes now chilled by the sudden drop in temperature.
For the first time the chief Medibot seemed to notice what was attached to Granny’s face. He inserted an instrument off the surgical tray into his right grip and poked the furry brown mask. At first it twitched. Then an unholy shriek ripped through Infirmary. The space bat whisked straight up off of Granny, zooming out of the Medibot’s grasping hands, straight towards Lianna. She unsealed her suit’s neckbolt, peeling a section from her chest. Gordon took advantage of the opportunity presented; his furry body burrowed into her bosom, nestling quickly as a wave of dizziness swept over her.
She thought the Medibot yelled “Hyperbaric chambers!”, pausing before striking the wall. Two lozenge-shaped tubes slid from the bulkhead to thump heavily on the deck.
Padded android hands hoisted her as though she were a throw pillow. A deep hiss issued from one padded tube, which yawned open to receive her. They settled her on a padded mattress and the lid slowly creaked shut. Where was Granny? Where were they taking her? Did they have decompression chambers for everyone–?
I’m still out here, Ernie. Wait, don’t get me yet, the seventh planet is gorgeous beneath me, its cloud cover rolling on its tipped hemispheres. Oh wow, aurora sparkled offside on its northern magnetic pole, spreading rainbow highlights throughout the planetary rings. Odd, the planet just spewed a dark plume of something over the eastern quadrant, coming towards me.
Sweet Kali, that’s not a noxious plume, it’s mantas—thousands of tiny bat mantas, probably migrating to new worlds to colonize. Several dozen slammed into my legs, their slick leathery bodies sliding between my thighs and taking a grip. Each one wasn’t much bigger than the size of my hand but they’re substantial buggers, five kilos each, like animated slabs of sausage.
There’s nowhere to go, and I don’t want to. This is what I live for, every fresh discovery a joy. I open my hands and two slip over them while another slick leathery body wriggled down the window in my suit’s chest piece, settling into my bosom. I can still breathe, though my chest is cloaked under their bodies. One manta caresses my neck, followed by another. The last manta spread its wings, exposing an underbelly with a network of nerve pathways highlighted by small energy discharges. This I see as wings caress my face.
–Wakey wakey, child—
Lianna blinked unto darkness. Damn, where did all her friends go? Across her lay an enormous supple weight, baubles and chains rattling across her chest. Tubes sprayed soft jets of pure oxygen into her nostrils. The darkness cleared a little, over a deep blue face grinning down on her with pointed teeth. Lianna mouthed one word: “Mom?”
“Shhh,” she smiled, fingers to blood red lips. “Sleep, you’ll rise soon. That was a brave thing you did. Stupid, but brave.”
Thanks, Lianna said, or thought, her mouth seemed…thick.
“You’re in Pressure Chamber Two in the Infirmary. When your internal pressure is equalized, and they are certain you have no embolisms, they will release you.”
-Where’s Granny, and Gita?
“She is in Bay No. One. Ernie is aware of the situation. I told him. He should be collecting Gita any time now.”
-What do you mean, in chamber? There’s nothing here. It’s just blank space!
“Your vision is temporarily impaired from your exposure to space. It will return soon.”
Lianna shook her head, blinked—and in a flash padded walls surrounded her, closed tight. The sheets beneath her were rough and scratchy as sandpaper. Bright light shone all around, and lying atop her Mother Kali still smiled, her necklace of skulls rattling on her breasts. Lianna shut her eyes again, welcoming back the darkness. She forgot sometimes how beautiful—how frightening—Mama could be.
Will Gita be all right, without me?
The answer didn’t come at once. Kali’s lips smacked, the four arms embracing Lianna tightening a fraction. “We shall see,” Kali finally said.
At last the hyperbaric pod exhaled like a dragon’s breath. The Medibot guided her onto a gurney and steered it towards the eastern bulkhead. Then he opened Granny’s chamber. She rolled out across a series of rollers onto her own gurney, at the end of the hyperbaric chamber. After the Medibot secured her, her rolled her beside Lianna.
The body facing her with grey pallid skin was a bloated parody of the vital statuesque woman who invited Lianna to share her suite only days ago. Her limbs seemed flaccid, her chest barely rising, breathing with the assistance of an oxygen bulb attached to her face.
Even the Medibot seemed nonplussed at first. “This is irrational. The patient should be responding to treatment. P-One!” This he addressed to a narrow probe dangling numerus sensor filaments, floating on dragonfly wings. “Examine the patient again. Scan for undetected cerebral blockages or any embolism in her circulatory vessels. The patient is known to have a history of cardiac episodes.”
“She what–?” Lianna exclaimed. “Why isn’t she responding? I was exposed just as long as she was.”
“Continue oxygen therapy,” the chief Medibot instructed his aides, seeming to ignore Lianna. Then he turned to address her. “She did not have your innate advantage, Dr. Jensen. The cytoplasm in your cellular structure offered some momentary insulation against your unprotected exposure to space. That advantage may have been temporary. If you’d lingered much longer in vacuum, there’s no guarantee that would’ve prevented the formation of embolisms in your blood as well.”
“Never mind me.” She shook her head, which wasn’t a good idea right now. Momentary dizziness swamped her. Her voice croaked as she pressed on. “Why hasn’t Granny responded?”
“She has, in a limited fashion. The embolisms have been reduced in her blood vessels. Preliminary scans show no blockages have reached her cerebellum. But she is 107 Terran years of age. She would not have the vitality of a 30-year-old.”
Lianna stared at her again. Was she just the slightest bit deflated, or was that wishful thinking? In her semi-mummified state, she almost seemed a century old. “I thought…Everybody called her Granny. I didn’t think…she never seemed that old.”
“Humans often choose not to be defined by their age. Ms. Hadebe appears to be in a self-induced coma. It is difficult to determine how this state will effect her long term recovery.”
“Self–? You don’t think she expected to survive–?”
“I do not speculate. Perhaps it was instinctive, her only means of self-preservation. We will keep her on life support as long as necessary. How did she come to be in empty space?”
“The explosive bolts blew in the bulkhead in front of her. She was swept out into space. I-I just followed her out.”
“Curious. The interior bulkheads in the public gallery have no explosive bolts, to prevent such an accidental occurrence.”
“I know what I saw. What I heard. Let Security draw their own conclusions when they recover the section of bulkhead and investigate. Is she gonna be all right?”
A human medic would probably offer some sense of false comfort. This medic was altogether too straightforward. “Prognosis is marginal at best. We will provide the best care possible, however, given her exposure—” he seemed to remember that part of his training related to empathy. “—Naturally a full recovery is expected. Perhaps she would respond if she had a friend to speak to her.”
Lianna nodded, oblivious to the false cheer his program projected. “Thanks, Doc. I didn’t mean to be rude.”
“You were not. Please, Dr. Jensen.”
She remained focused on Granny’s body after he shuffled away to log his medical report. “You can’t leave me alone like this,” she said, stroking Granny’s hand. “I’ve never been able to talk to anybody else about the pure shit that my life has been. Everyone tells me I should be grateful that I survived, that I discovered so many peoples. I-I never felt at home with my own people. Even at the observatory I wasn’t really one of them. I was SPECIAL, the one to treat like glass, except for Fayd and the Professor, you know what I mean? I never felt human.
“I didn’t have to worry about that with you. It’s the same way with you, isn’t it? This is so weird. YOU’RE so weird, but…you’re probably the most human person I’ve ever met. You barely knew me—and I was such an ass!—and you made me welcome in your home. And Gita…Gods, what have I done? What if she’d got hurt since I’ve been in here? You’re the kind of mother she should have. There’s so much to learn, how do I—
“See, I don’t even know what I’m trying to say. I don’t know what your big secret is, what drove you to exile yourself here, in the backwater of the Sol System, but…I’m no good at self-expression. I’m just saying, you matter to me and you can’t leave me. Please. I love you, Granny.”
For a fraction of a second, the hand she’d been stroking clenched around her fingers. If she had the energy, she might have thrown up her arms and shouted. That was okay; this simple muscle contraction was enough.
At last Ernie trundled into the Infirmary. Lianna peeked around him, expecting Gita ether to be beside or behind him. She frowned as the child remained elusive. She was easing her legs to the floor when he took her hands and eased her back onto her cot. “Where’s Gita?” she asked, soto voce. It was the best she could manage. “She didn’t get swept into space too—”
“NO!” Ernie didn’t often use emotive voc. Apparently, he deduced that circumstances warranted it. “Gita is in no danger of extravehicular transit,” he added. “The situation is somewhat more difficult.”
“Where is she? Has Security found her? What the fu—”
While she was babbling Ernie extracted a folded slip of message board and opened it to her. The note was plain enough:
The child has been taken into custody by the brothers of FAITH. No harm will come to her, provided Dr. Lianna Jensen draws up departure plans within the next 48 hours.
-0-
