The Colony Ship Eschaton: The entire ten book series, page 30
“The shoulder is repaired!” This time Hulda let out a bit of surprise and astonishment.
Jacob stretched out his arm and it worked well. “It feels tingly and itchy and weak. But it works.” Lottie and Rowan hugged their son, Jacob. Joel hugged him tightest of all. They walked slowly out of the healer's cabin and were surrounded by the people of Antioch.
Hulda smiled a huge smile and watched as the family stepped from her cabin to talk to Lydia. She then turned to Willie. “So why not use this… thing… on your arm?”
“The bones in my arm were healed, but the nerves and cells were crushed. Medical treatments can heal bones, and muscles, but they cannot regenerate nerves. I sure wish it could.” Willie looked somewhat wistfully away.
“May I look at your arm?” Hulda said.
“I guess so,” Willie replied. Hulda pulled the arm out from its sling. Willie watched in a detached manner. “I cannot even really feel you touching me.”
Hulda reached over to her bench and removed a bottle and a pack of needles. The needles looked like they were made from small bones. “May I fix your arm?”
“Sweetheart, if you can fix my arm, I will marry you!” Willie said.
“Despite that possibility," Hulda began, but then looked at Willie. “Well, perhaps romance later?” said Hulda. “But this will hurt very much. The tonic will need to dig new pathways.” She then took a large needle out and dipped it into the dark thick liquid in the bottle. “Again, I tell you this will cause pain.”
“Sure, sure, I have not felt anything in that arm for years, so go for it. But your primitive folk medicine cannot do anything,” Willie said. He never expected what would happen next. Hulda jabbed the needle deep into his arm, just anterior to the thumb. The dark thick liquid mixed with the drops of blood which came out from the puncture wound. Then that combination, gelled into a small round object. The object then grew three legs on each side. Willie’s eyes grew wide and, before he could do stop it, that legged object was burrowing itself into his arm.
“Yikes!” Willie screamed out. “That really hurts!”
“I told you it would. Let the tonic do its work,” Hulda said.
“What have you done to me?” Willie cried out and grabbed his bad arm with his other one. “I am feeling something crawling inside…” A shocked look appeared on Willie’s face. It was not a look of pain, more a look of genuine surprise. “I can feel.... in this arm!”
“Yes, the tonic will make new pathways. It will take several treatments, but your arm should recover much of its function,” Hulda said and nodded at Willie.
“Why did you not tell me about this before?” Willie asked.
“You did not ask. So I assumed you did not wish to be healed,” she replied. “I do not know your ways and did not wish to intrude. I was very surprised you offered to help heal Jacob. Could your machine not heal your arm?”
“I am not a doctor. All the doctors I saw, after this arm was crushed, told me the same thing. The nerves could not be regrown. Then later I was so used to it, I just adjusted.” Willie was still wincing a bit with the pain. “How does this work?”
“I make a tonic with the eggs of certain insects: ticks, dung beetles, lice, along with other ingredients. The tonic is very elemental. Then, when your blood mixes with the tonic, a Saint Peter bug is created, and that goes to work on your nerves. Each Saint Peter bug only lives for about a day, but they know what to repair and what not to repair. They do not mend bones, just nerves. I learned this from my parents, and they from their parents. Healers have always done this. Is this new to you?” Hulda replied.
“Sweetheart, we need to talk and share, because I think we both have been missing something very important,” Willie smiled at Hulda. He intended more than just an exchange of medical ideas.
18 automacubes on parade
Regina did not dream while in suspended animation. Her mind was just sort of turned off: no hearing, no thinking, no dreaming. Her body, snug in its cocoon stretcher, was being carried by the three automacubes - yellow, blue, and white - who had just departed from Biological Research 47R. The Emergency Evacuation Protocol called for transport of injured personnel to a primary emergency medical facility. The automacubes were nowhere as sophisticated in their thinking as an artificial intelligence, but they did follow established parameters accurately. Each had a somewhat limited range of options to carry out their primary tasks and did network with other automacubes in doing more complex tasks.
So they carried the inert body of Regina down a connection hallway and came upon a portal for transports. The yellow automacube plugged a jack into the wall near the portal. It attempted to contact the AI for transport to the medical facility. Had it been more observing of its surroundings, it would have noticed that the top half of the transport portal was melted into slag. The rest of the hallway was strewn with debris and broken things, mostly personal items discarded in a long ago departure from this part of the ship.
The yellow automacube attempted to connect to the AI three times, and then its programming assumed that the emergency situation had affected the transport portal. In a way, it had, but that damage was several generations ago and was not directly connected to Regina’s injuries.
So, the three automacubes shifted around and maneuvered the stretcher down the hallway and sought an alternative route to the medical facility. Reaching the end of the hallway, they set the stretcher down. Then the blue automacube opened a door, and a ladder was revealed. Using its appendage, the blue automacube easily climbed the ladder to the next deck. Using two axels which extended outward, it pressed a set of wheels into the walls and anchored itself in the hallway above. Then it lowered a cable which had been wound inside its cube shaped body. The yellow automacube then attached the cable to the stretcher, the white one assisting in the connection. The cable then was drawn upward, and the yellow and white automacubes climbed along behind the stretcher which carried Regina.
The deck they were now on was similar to the one below, at least in structure. Blue plugged into a wall port and called for assistance from Machine Maintenance and Repair, but there was no reply. Blue put in a repair order to Central Processing for the transport portal on the deck below. Then the blue automacube reeled in the cable and pulled its wheel set back into travel position. Together with white and yellow, it hoisted the stretcher up and continued progressing to the nearest medical clinic.
The floor plan in yellow’s memory circuits showed that Medical Clinic 87 was located several corridors over, so that was where they headed. Medical Clinic 87 was not a primary emergency medical center, like the one they had wanted to reach via the transport system, but protocol and parameters indicated that yellow should lead them to the nearest medical facility, now that the transport system was non-functional.
They approached a doorway that failed to open. So they diverted around that and took another passage in an attempt to reach Medical Clinic 87. This hallway was collapsed and filled with junk: broken permalloy, wiring, plumbing ducts and ventilation materials. So they diverted yet again. After a prolonged attempt to find ways around the broken or blocked hallways and doors, the three automacubes stopped.
An appendage came out from Blue and undid a grate in the wall. The grill work fell to the floor with a loud clang. Though, there was no one there to hear it. The automacubes then carefully maneuvered the stretcher, still inflated and holding Regina in suspended animation, through a twisting set of tertiary repair and access passages. Yellow led the way; white pushed the stretcher, and blue followed. Blue then replaced the grill after they had all entered the passageway. The blackness in the passages did not bother the automacubes since they maneuvered by their limited sensor equipment and programmed schematics of ship's systems.
Eventually, they progressed to a point where they had to descend at a sharp incline, but the automacubes were used to those kinds of feats, and their wheels adjusted accordingly. Sometime later, they went past another grill which looked out over a different hallway. They then stopped, and blue opened up this grill; it, too, fell to the floor making a clanging noise. The three automacubes then maneuvered the stretcher into the hall, blue going first, then white, then yellow. Blue quickly replaced the grill.
There was no sense of joy or happiness in the automacubes, now that they were in the hallway outside of Medical Clinic 87. Automacubes had no feelings or emotions, not even the synthetic pseudo-emotions of the artificial intelligences aboard the Eschaton, not to mention the nearly human personalities of the AIs which were back in Dome 17. No, automacubes just did their jobs as they were designed. So, the horrors that were in the hallway leading to Medical Clinic 87 did not affect them.
For this hallway was not filled with just debris and broken mechanical parts. This hallway was also filled with dried out, nearly mummified bodies from people long dead. Along with the ripped and tattered clothing that had once held those same corpses together. The people had all been traumatized in one manner or another. They had all died here many years before. The pools of blood and other essential bodily fluids, which had once been liquids, were now nothing more than dark stains on the floors, ceiling and walls.
The white automacube went from body to body assessing each, but offering no help to the long-ago dead. White jacked into a port on one wall and sent a request for Security and for Mortuary Assistance to come to this location. Blue and yellow worked to clear the bodies out of the way so that the doors to Medical Clinic 87 could be reached.
At the doorways into Medical Clinic 87 were the crushed and broken remains of two automacubes that had been red. Those broken mechanical bodies were tossed aside like the mummified corpses. Blue had to use powerful spreader mechanisms on its appendage to pry open the doors to Medical Clinic 87.
The automacubes brought the stretcher carrying Regina into Medical Clinic 87. This section was a burned and charred mass of destruction. The exam stations were black and melted. The walls were scorched. Most of the equipment was mission or broken. Broken piping and ducts hung down from the opened ceiling. There was no one alive, and no functioning artificial intelligence, to accept delivery of the stretcher.
Blue pried open the doors to the surgical suite, and that area was not damaged to the extent of the main parts of the section. The lights and surgical table had been overturned, but, on one wall, there appeared some unbroken ports and taps. A white light was blinking over one access port.
Yellow approached the wall and connected a cable into the access port. A small display lit up, and a series of red flashing lights appeared in quick sequence. Over and over the red lights flashed until a green one finally appeared. Yellow had linked to a partially functional directory of the medical facilities of the Eschaton. Yellow now knew their next destination. Before unjacking from the system, yellow put in another request for assistance to Security: local and ship-wide. Then sent urgent requests to Machine Maintenance and Repair, to Central Processing, and to Transport Authority. Yellow could find no active links, or couplings, to anything aside from the partially functioning directory, but sent the requests anyway.
Leaving through another doorway at the far end of Medical Clinic 87, whose doors were missing, the three automacubes departed. They still carried the stretcher holding Regina as they continued their long journey to complete the Emergency Evacuation Protocols.
19 reunion, but now who is lost?
“Well, looks like we made it back," Jamie said in a tired voice. She was jogging alongside her husband as they moved out from the trees of the forest. Sweat beaded on her forehead and down her back.
“I hope those boys told Lydia what was happening. I expected to meet the legionnaires already," Michael replied. He too was sweaty and tired. They had been pushing very hard to get back, ever since Sinclair had escaped through the permalloy door in the edge of the habitat. They had spoken little, and each had thoughts racing through their minds about the deaths they had administered. “I hope they made it back without troubles.”
“We will learn soon enough. If Sinclair has hurt the boys, I will personally break both her legs before I rip out her throat," Jamie gave a quick smile to Michael. Her freckles were covered in sweat. Michael knew that look. Her smile was only slightly effective in reducing the image of the violence Jamie wanted to inflict on her enemy. To a stranger it might appear as some kind of gallows humor, but Michael knew better. She was deadly serious.
They made good time over the farm fields and entered Antioch.
“Hello!” Michael called.
People came running and surrounded Michael and Jamie. There were many questions asked.
“Did Joel and Jacob make it back here?” Jamie asked repeatedly. The crowd tried to answer, but with so many voices, Jamie was unsure what they were saying.
“One at a time!” Michael yelled.
“Michael. I can answer your questions,” Levi walked up to them and hugged Michael. Michael was very surprised by this public show of affection. “The boys did return here,” Levi stated, “but on the way they were attacked. Jacob has been healed, and they are both with their parents in the center discussing the situation with others. Let us go and join them.”
“Attacked?” Jamie stated. Levi nodded but said no more. He led Michael and Jamie away toward the largest building in Antioch. It was larger than the cabins and served as the city center. It was also connected to the place where the transport portals were located. Over the doorway to the Center, the words “Faith, Obedience, Honor” were carved into the metal.
As Levi, Jamie and Michael entered and passed through the rooms to the meeting hall, the atmosphere was solemn. There was also tension in the air. Jamie remembered the first time they had entered this building, and it, too, was with Levi. There was a sense of déjà vu, but they would not be meeting Rector Robert or Rectora Hazel this time, for they had died. Now Rectora Lydia, Hazel’s daughter, was in office. The position of Rector remained vacant since Robert’s disgraceful death.
The meeting room was filled with people. Lydia was at the head of the table and was carefully listening as Gideon was speaking. All heads turned toward Michael and Jamie as they entered, and all talk ceased. Lottie and Rowan stood quickly and marched up to Michael and Jamie. Michael steeled himself for the scolding he was certain was coming. A quick glance at Jamie and he knew that she too was expecting at least a verbal reprimand and maybe a slap to the face.
Lottie came right up to Michael, stared him in the eyes, and hugged him. Michael was shocked. “I forgive you both for endangering my sons. Do not be hard on yourself; no one knew this would happen.” Lottie turned to Jamie and also hugged her. Jamie was speechless.
“The boys are safe,” Rowan said and gestured to where Joel and Jacob were sitting at the table. They looked very serious and very tired. “Let your hearts be relieved. They are safe, and I, too, forgive you.” Rowan patted Michael on the shoulder. He then turned to Jamie and patted her on the shoulder. “Let go of your worry; they are safe, and now healed.”
Michael and Jamie stared at each other. Neither had expected this kind of reception. Neither had verbalized the fact that they were deeply worried about the boys and had felt immense guilt at the danger the boys had been in. The weight of those feelings rushed forward. A few tears ran down Michael’s face as he looked at the boys. Jamie rushed over, squatted down and looked at each boy. She bowed her head, touching her forehead to Jacob’s and then to Joel’s. “I am glad you are safe,” she whispered.
“Shammai attacked us and…” Joel began, but Jacob interrupted him.
“We had to fight him off, and my arm was broken.” Jacob held out his arm. “But Willie and Hulda fixed it really good!” Jamie threw her arms around both boys and held them tightly.
“We need to continue. And since Michael and Jamie are here, they can add to what we know,” Lydia said. “Gideon, can your plans wait until we hear from them?”
“Certainly, and our plans may need to be changed,” Gideon sat down.
Chairs were pulled up for Michael and Jamie, and a small plate of fresh fruit and bread was slid quietly in front of them. They looked around the room. Lorna was seated next to Lydia, and there were some legionnaires and several others, including Brink and Willie. Those gathered at the table were an even mix of Antioch citizens and refugees from Dome 17. Rectora Lydia turned to Michael and Jamie and said, “Please tell us what happened after you told the boys to come back to Antioch.”
Michael and Jamie took turns explaining all that they had encountered with Sinclair and the bandits. There were several gasps when the deaths of Dome 17 people were reported and more shocked expressions in response to the ambush by the bridge. Jamie and Michael reported it just as they would have had they been seated before the Committee of Dome 17 - in a manner of speaking they were, for Lorna was the only surviving Committee member - and the people of Antioch seemed to look to her as a leader of the Domers. The biggest difference was that now Michael and Jamie did not have their personal AIs to give visual reports as well.
