Hospital Ship (The Rim Confederacy #5) (15 page)

Waiting is always fun. Not as much fun as counting your shortcomings—but still better than being in jail.

Least so far,
he thought and waited patiently for his doctor to notice him.

Beige walls, no art to look at, except the framed diploma over there from Ishtar, the doctor had said—where the weapons were so plentiful they exported them all over the RIM. Wasn't that crazy he was thinking when the doctor looked up at him.

"Captain Scott, I see you're here, in person and a full five minutes early. Thank you for being so prompt, Captain," he said.

His voice is maybe just a teensy bit sarcastic
, Tanner though.

"Nice to be here, Doctor. Been here on the Hospital Ship for what like almost a full month now. And waiting to prove to you—to all of you—that I'm sane. Honest, Doctor," he said and smiled. No sense in missing a chance, he figured.

"I see that, yes, you've been here a month, and so far, so good," his psychiatrist said.

Tanner nodded. That was true.

"And so, after all those tests, after the nuclear MRIs et al.—we have some news for you. You are an alcoholic, Captain Scott. Plain and simple," he said and looked sad.

But again, it is true.

"I suppose my answer is supposed to be able to tell me something I do not know," Tanner said as he crossed his arms at the news.

Dr. Etter smiled at him and then pointed at his face.

"But after all those tests, here's what we also know, Captain. That your liver is healthy; a little enlarged, a little less than peak in efficiency, but on the whole, in great shape. This is very important to you too, as the cure as they say is right around the corner—well, down on Deck B-18, the outpatient clinic on our Psych Ward. You've an appointment there in about forty minutes for a single vaccination. And that's the alcoholism gone."

Tanner stared at his doctor and then a moment later, chuckled.

"You had me going there for a moment, Doc," he said and the chuckle continued as he uncrossed his arms and was about to really laugh right out loud when his doctor held up his hand to stop him.

"I'm the science guy here, and you pilot star ships, but here's the story in a nutshell, Captain. Testing over the past month has shown that like about nineteen percent of the rest of the galaxy's population, you have a certain variant of the opioid receptor gene OPRM1, which means that this new vaccine, which is a very aggressive opioid receptor modulator, which exhibits antagonist activity at the mu and delta opioid receptors. What that means is that once the vaccine is administered and then it gets into your system, you will suffer a reduction of any enjoyment of alcohol consumption without physical withdrawal symptoms. Cure? Yes, I'd say that this vaccine, C20H23NO4 is your formula, will work first time. You may suffer, however, from the standard side effects of non-specific gastrointestinal complaints such as diarrhea and abdominal cramping, but that is only minor. And as the vaccine can cause liver damage issues, you'll need annual liver functionality testing for the rest of your life. But no Scotch. It will be like drinking water. New? Relatively here on the RIM, yes, but the data from inwards is compellingly simple. The vaccine contains an opioid receptor antagonist that is the modulator of the dopaminergic mesolimbic pathway. Ahh," he said interrupting himself, "and that is one of the primary centers for risk-reward analysis in the brain, and a tertiary 'pleasure center.' Drinking will end for you as a non-fun pastime."

The doctor leaned back, looked at him, and half-smiled at his patient.

Tanner sat and stared at the man. His foot was bouncing and he felt sick to his stomach for a moment, then not so much, and then it came back in waves. His stomach churned, but his outward appearance was rock solid as the PTSD swept over him, a prisoner of his past.

He shrugged and tried to push those feelings away.

A simple shot, and it was gone. That easy. For a moment, he thought of what drinking had cost him to fight back the rising realization that he actually liked Scotch. But it would be not pleasurable at all. Like drinking water.

He knew when he was beaten though, and he forced a small smile and wondered if the doctor knew how he felt.

"You said I have a gene—me and nineteen percent of the galaxy?" he asked and wondered on that for a moment.

"What would have happened if I didn't have that gene, like most of the rest of us here?"

The doctor nodded and went back to his tablet. "Then we'd have had to go about this through therapy with its less than thirty percent success rate, and that'd have taken a year or so, so you'd be a permanent resident here, Captain, for at least that amount of time.

Tanner nodded. "So go down to the outpatient clinic, get a shot, and I'm cured. Then what?" he queried his doctor, knowing what was coming.

"Then we work on your PTSD, Captain ... your fear of arms, your fear of anything and everything else that has affected you too. That will take some time too, you do realize, correct?"

He wasn't looking at him, but was typing slowly on his tablet, and Tanner wondered if it was even his file that was on screen, but then he didn't need to know that. What he needed to know was that his reliance on Scotch was over.

"Doctor, do I need annual vaccine booster shots, every year or ..." he wondered.

Again, not looking up, the doctor nodded and half-smiled too.

"Boosters every five years, but the way science works, by the time that rolls around, it might be a single shot forever, Captain. Isn't science fun ..."

He put down his tablet and then squared himself in his chair at the desk.

"I see we have twenty minutes yet of time—why don't you tell me more about your boyhood on ... what was the name of that planet again?"

####

Principal Research Scientist is my title,
Alex Toombs thought,
another way of saying loser.

He had no idea as to why this was not working as he stared at the remains of the petri dish he'd just hurled at the far wall in the Secure labs, and he did not care who else was in the lab either.

Most of the other scientists had tucked their heads down and pretended they didn't hear the smash of the glass as it met its end against the steel bulkhead. Others had simply left the lab. Not a one, of course, as he was the head of the team, had chanced to make a comment.

Petri dishes were cheap, but I wonder what the cost of all of this is
.

Secure lab costs; staff of seventeen scientists and their salaries; those damn Garnuthian mice at more than 240 credits each by the hundreds of dozens; and petri dishes at who knew what costs. This was not a cheap enterprise but one that needed to be done.

We need that vaccine—if we ever want to use the Ikarian gift
.

Okay, think scientist think.

It seemed the history of this virus was as follows. It hit the Ikarian planet and just about did the whole civilization in as it raised dust that killed sunlight and all the crops. One generation died in big numbers. The next lived frugally, with little to eat or even grow, as it took more than a hundred years for the sky to clear and let the life of sunshine back down on the planet. That was further impacted by the climate changes, the changes to the continents due to the huge impact of the comet, and more importantly maybe, the changes that happened to the Ikarian society too.

"Right," he said to himself, "so the comet damage in say two or three generations was slowly beaten back by the planet itself."

The climates righted themselves, land became fertile once more, and the people worked at existence.

But the secret was, of course, that the comet carried a virus—that once released, lived and survived and infected each and every Ikarian on the planet.

So they were all infected. But the adults it was said got little in a boost of longevity—it was the children who when puberty arrived were most affected, and it was them who gained the lengthened years. From a population who lived on average about 110 years, the data said, the new children of each generation doubled that number. Two hundred. Three hundred. Perhaps even four hundred years was what the Ikarians now lived. Or more.

No new virus infections were made, as the Sleeper Ship was populated with sleeping children.

And no one else had ever been infected as that came from being alive on Ikaria.

He shrugged.

No way to tell why it worked. No way to tell how it worked, and if we don't start to get better results, we'll be just like ... just like ...

That stopped him cold—wait, there was an idea bubbling there ...

He nurtured that thought, letting it grow in his brain, and matched it against what he knew science-wise and against what he knew, Ikarian-wise, and finally, he smiled. It wasn't a broad smile, but a small sort of inner one that leaked out onto his face.

"It might be," he said to himself and looked around the room.

There was no one here with that kind of specialty—so he barked loudly at his number two.

"Manson, get over here," he said and turned in all directions until he saw his aide over in the far corner, busy on the bottom shelf of a large bookcase.

Research scientist Errol Manson stood, and with a slow shudder, he walked the full length of the lab to stand in front of his boss.

"Sir," he said quietly, questioning his call.

"Manson, I need the best liver guy on the planet here in front of me in two hours. Find him or her. Get them here then. No equivocations either, Manson," he said and his voice was taut and full of importance.

Manson nodded, half-turned away, and then looked back at Toombs.

Toombs nodded and said, "I meant NOW, Manson," and he looked back at the petri dish rack in front of him.

The fact that they were all un-bloomed was one thing. The fact that the whole test, E-04, was forsaken was not important either.

He'd have to let Ward know to kill the latest batch of mice down in the Animal Testing lab too.

But maybe—just maybe, the liver was the key. Toombs ran through his thoughts out loud.

“Livers did what livers did—aging affects different organs, tissues, and cell types in the same organism in different ways; that is, the extent of age-associated perturbations of structure and function is site-specific. The effects of aging on the mammalian liver had never been clearly resolved. Despite the plethora of age-associated changes in hepatic structure and function that have been described, many of these observations are qualitative in nature, were made under less than optimal experimental conditions, or are simply conflicting."

He'd been taught that in his final years at the Barony Research College of Physicians, and yet he had always postulated that aging exerts a limited effect on the constitutive functions of the liver and more on its response to extra-hepatic factors.

And the liver still went on, acting as the single organ that filtered each and every molecule of blood delivered to every single cell in the body. Every one. All the time. And that meant that aging perhaps—and he nodded to himself here—could be lengthened if the liver did something in an Ikarian that it did not do in everyone else. Maybe. Maybe was the active word there.

The liver changed all its incoming nutrients into a new biochemical form—that fact he remembered was from his thirty-year-old classes back in the college.

More than that, the liver also had a network of bile ducts and that was what had suddenly come to him as an idea. Bile was the greenish liquid—except in Leudies where it was bright, bright blue due he thought in some way to their symbiotic existence to their neck snakes. But that wasn't what had made a dent in his consciousness.

It was, as he knew, the rows of liver cells separated by space that was important. Together, those spaces acted like a sieve through which the blood flowed. This sieve—like a RIM customs agent finding out what illegal goods someone was bringing onto a planet—removed toxic substances from the bloodstream. Those toxins could come in the form of everything from drugs and alcohol to chemicals and microorganisms … and perhaps aging had filterable items too.

It was that single thought that had leapt out from his college classes of decades ago.

The liver, as he remembered, had special Kupffer cells, which ate up and broke down the toxins or aging too perhaps.

In short, these cells disarm the toxins by converting a dangerous chemical to a less harmful one or by packaging them for easier disposal through an Ikarian's bile or urine. The latter approach revealed how the sly liver didn't always have to fight its enemies head-on. Instead, it often used a martial arts approach and paralyzed toxins by wrapping them in a water-soluble chemical so they landed in a toilet rather than in a vital organ.

He smiled.

The urine of an adult Ikarian as opposed to a child Ikarian needed to be tested, and then if possible with an Ikarian child who was in puberty at the same time.

And we need to do that yesterday
,
Toombs thought.

Something was nudging his consciousness again, and he knew enough to let it sit and bloom on its own.

It had been a comment back a week or so ago at the last M&M meeting, and he knew who had said it, the Radiology department head doctor.

She had talked about their PET scanning and positrons. And that for some reason, the two opposing gamma rays must have been faulty due to some kind of a radioactive, biologically active substance that had gone undetected within the media.

PET scanning. Gamma rays ... more things to check, but this was an interesting new trail to follow ...

####

Dr. Bassem sat and toyed with the latte in front of him. He pushed the spoon around in the dregs of the foam inside the tall plas-cup and sighed a bit right out loud. He had been spending far too much time each lunchtime, sitting and listening and trying to identify the voices around him. He'd noticed that for the most part, staff here were somewhat territorial when it came to the tables they chose to sit and eat at—and he'd seen some folks get downright surly when they arrived at their usual table, trays in hand, and found them full.