Shadows In Still Water (2 page)

By 0300 hours, Earth standard time, Millie felt as if someone had held her eyes open and sandblasted them. Setting the medical scanner down on the table in front of her, she flexed her tired fingers. She glanced around the conference hall to see if the crowd had thinned yet as well as work the kinks out of her neck.

Her table stood eighth in line from the main entrance. A number of beings still pressed in through the door, adding to the stifling, stale air of the place, but no one seemed to notice that Millie’s station was available. It gave her a chance to catch her breath.

The
Pasteur
crew had set up a number of testing stations marked out with lines on the floor to keep traffic as controlled as possible. Millie wondered if they had slowed down at the registration tables. Leaning forward, she could see one of her nurses, Zimbin, with his three meter tall furry frame hunched into a chair, his knees hanging out to the sides in forlorn fashion with no place to go. He held his great purple tongue to his upper lip in heavy concentration as if that would help the computer process the information faster.

All the big Berellian had to do was take each person’s I.D. card and stick it in the slot. After confirming identification, the computer put an encrypted tag on the card’s microprocessor. Zimbin then directed the person to the next testing table. After testing was completed, they were directed to the side door where more computers would open the encrypted tag into a sunburst design indicating that its owner had been tested and cleared. Not a complicated process but tedious.

Beyond Zimbin, Millie could see that two of the other five registration tables were empty, their attendants probably on break. As head nurse, she supposed she ought to go prod them along.

“Excuse me.”

Millie started at the deep voice next to her left ear. She turned. Something cold spiked up her back to make her shiver.

A Kaprinian male stood before her, staring back at her with eyes a sort of mottled blue and green color. A narrow strip of blue hair swept back from his pointed forehead, mohawk fashion. His two antennae twisted into an unnatural spiral and pulsated there as if some unseen, vicious force controlled them. Instead of the usual golden hue of a healthy Kaprinian, his skin held a slight greenish cast.

Where had he come from? Millie wondered. If someone let him in the side door, that person was in serious trouble.
Switching the translator hooked to her utility belt to English-Kaprinian, she asked, “Are you registered, sir?” she asked. “There are tables at the main...”

Before the translator kicked in, he responded in English, “Yes, I need to be tested.” He held up a PEF card which meant he was an employee of GEM Co.

Millie frowned. GEM Co. had relatively few aliens on its payroll, the contingent of Silurians represented the bulk of them, and until now Millie had known of only one Kaprinian.

“All right, roll up your sleeve,” Millie ordered as she reset her scanner and opened a new box of epidermal patches. She tried not to stare at the black and red coiled serpents he had tattooed on his forearm. She still wondered where he had come from. He couldn’t have materialized out of thin air, at least she didn’t think so, hoped not.

“You must be from the
Pasteur
,” the Kaprinian said.

Millie nodded. She placed a patch on his wrist, trying not to recoil from the moist flesh despite the gloves she wore.

“I was in line over there,” he gestured with his free hand toward Dr. Ja-ka-thon Rialus’s table a few feet away.

So that was it. At least he wasn’t some sort of evil wight. What had made her think of that? She wasn’t given to wild imaginings. Just tired, she thought.

“But I couldn’t stand the stench of the half-breed,” he continued.

That brought Millie’s head up. The strange Kaprinian’s grin looked evil indeed. He had spoken loud enough to be heard half way to the corridor outside. The under current of noise in the conference hall paused for a moment then continued a little louder than before. A quick glance to her left told her Jak Rialus had heard the insult. She could tell by the set of his two, straight, flexible antennae. Jak had a mix of three-quarters Kaprinian, one-quarter human blood thanks to his paternal grandmother. His humanness showed only in his curly brown hair and more muscular build. Jak was certainly no more outside the bounds of Kaprinian normalcy than the stranger himself.

“Hold your hand still, please,” Millie said.

The chemical inside the patch should have entered the bloodstream by now. It would attach itself to the enzyme particular to raphrydia if the disease was present. Millie passed the scanner over the stranger’s wrist, watching the readout. After five seconds, the scanner beeped, having detected no raphrydia.

“You’re clear,” she told him. Stripping off the patch, she disposed of it in the waste unit next to the table, slid his PEF card through the scanner and handed it back to him. “Take your card to one of the computers at the side door to finish registration. There are certain areas of the station that have been restricted. Warning signs are posted. Thank you for your cooperation.” She made an effort to smile.

The Kaprinian smiled back, a nice one this time. It made him look younger and less strange. Millie decided she must be tired, letting him get on her nerves like that. She watched him to the door then looked over at Dr. Rialus. “I’m taking a break, Jak,” she told him.

Jak nodded. His antennae had relaxed.

Hooking the scanner in its place on her utility belt, Millie made for the far corner of the conference hall, following the sweet smell of kanic coming from the dispenser. Several other nurses and lab technicians were gathered around the kanic table, drinking the hot, yellow liquid and talking.

Rob Keller, head lab tech, leaned his tall, broad-shouldered frame against the wall, his long, curly blonde hair pulled into a tangled ponytail. GEM Co. regulations required it much shorter but Keller was something of a maverick. Dr. Aurelia, who had a thing about hair herself, didn’t care as long as he did his work. He did straighten up when he saw Millie approaching.

“Oh, oh,” he said, “here comes the boss.” He tossed her a disposable cup. “Gonna make us go back to work?”

Filling the cup from the dispenser, Millie blew on the kanic, feeling the heat warm her fingers through the thick polyfibers. She took a large swallow before answering, “You’ve been here long enough to drink a couple of gallons at least, Rob. Now why would I even be thinking of sending you back?” She deliberately raised an eyebrow at him.

“Oooh, look out, told you she had eyes in the back of her head,” called one of the nurses.

Laughing at the serious expression on Keller’s face, Millie patted his hand. “I’m just kidding, Rob. I know it’s been a long night.”

"Why can't we get like five big scanners on the
Pasteur
and just scan the whole station at once?"Rob complained.

"They actually talked about that a few years ago but decided it wasn't profitable." Millie fanned her face wondering why she was drinking hot kanic in the close atmosphere. “It’s stifling in here. Can’t we get the air filters working?”

“They are working,” Rob replied.

“Too many bodies in here,” said Janel Frison, one of the orderlies.

“I think they’re multiplying out in the halls. Spontaneous generation,” offered head resident doctor, Sshn’LRuh, waving a tentacle in front of the pink blob that passed for her face. A native of Gidellia, she resembled an Earth octopus. She moved around in a motorized environmental control tank that kept the main portion of her body in warm saltwater, only needing to submerge her head and tentacles for brief periods. Speaking through a computer control box, LRuh had adapted readily to the human environment. With her tentacles which divided into six smaller ones called tentapeds, she was as dexterous or more so than any two-handed human.

Of the five hospital ships in GEM Co’s fleet, the
Louis
Pasteur
was the only one that was alien integrated, largely thanks to Dr. Aurelia who hired talent not genetic lines. Certain members of GEM Co’s board of directors and others within the ranks grumbled but couldn’t argue with the
Pasteur
’s higher profit margins. The
Pasteur
’s total crew complement included nine doctors, three of them alien: Rialus, LRuh and Korlon from the planet Rama. Of the fifty nurses, five were Berellian and six were from other planets. The pharmacy, lab and radiological technicians, forty in all, split in half between alien and human. Ten of the twenty orderlies were also alien species. The remaining one hundred crew members in engineering and auxiliary services such as maintenance, kitchen and security were all human. An eclectic group but Millie liked them. After ten years as head nurse, she had grown to consider most of them like family. And like family they sometimes needed a gentle but firm guiding hand. The crowd around the kanic dispenser was getting a little too large.

“Say, Mil,” spoke up Lak Zanin, a dark-skinned, blonde-haired woman from the planet Rama, “through testing and we don’t find a carrier.”

Millie squinted, trying to figure out that one. Since GEM Co. was governed by the North American-Mars Federation, their official language was English. Raman was an economical language with no inflections and Lak still tended to forget important words. Deciding Lak had asked a question, Millie replied, “If we don’t find a carrier when we’re through here, I guess we either convince the Jidalians that this epidemic will probably run its course in a couple of days or we start going through each ship’s cargo by hand.”
This last was met by a chorus of groans. Finishing her drink, Millie set the cup on the table. “The sooner we get finished here the better.”

They must have gotten the hint because they all started drifting back to their stations as Millie headed for the door for a breath of fresh air.

“Mahealani!”

Millie stopped in the open frame of the side door. Oh great, she thought, staring longingly out at the quiet hallway. It was always worrisome when people started using her full Hawaiian name; it usually meant trouble.

Turning around, she saw Dr. Aurelia shaking a box upside down to indicate it was empty. With a sigh, the nurse retraced her steps past her own table and several others to reach Aurelia.

“I’m out of patches,” the doctor announced, her voice sounding tired. She tossed the box to Millie who caught it and peered into the dark interior--just in case.

Millie looked back up at Aurelia who was quite a bit taller. The doctor’s angular face showed the strain of the past hours. Millie could read all the signs: the chief surgeon was tired, hungry and getting crabby.

“I’ve got a few patches left,” Millie offered. “Jak has some too.”

Aurelia sighed, turning her back on the line of waiting people, and reached up to pull off her clasp, allowing her hair to fall to her waist. “I’ve got a monstrous headache,” she said. “And my leg is killing me.”

“Why don’t you take a break, Aura,” Millie urged. “I’ll take your table.”

Aurelia shrugged, “I want to get this testing done.”

With a sigh, Millie went to her table and got her box of patches then walked over to Dr. Rialus’s table. Leaning one hand on his back, feeling the hard shell or carapace that covered his torso like a plate of armor, she reached around him for a handful of patches. “They’re for Aurelia not me, Jak,” she quickly explained.

Getting no response, Millie peered into his face. He looked upset but not at her. She wondered if he was still thinking about what the strange Kaprinian had said. She gave his back a friendly pat then walked back to Aurelia.

Stacking the patches on the table, Millie asked, “ Have you heard of GEM hiring another Kaprinian?”

Aurelia looked up from resetting her scanner. “No. Why?”

“Did you see that Kaprinian earlier? The one with the spiral antennae?”

“I heard him.” Aurelia’s lips tightened.

“He had a PEF card.”

“Might have been a courtesy card.”

“No, it was a regular card. Dummy me didn’t think to get his name.”

“Hey,” growled the first man in the line waiting for Aurelia’s table. He moved forward. “I’d like to get out of here sometime before the next millennium.”

Aurelia glared at him, “Step back behind the blue line.”

“I just...”

“The blue line.”

The man did as he was told, not looking happy.

“Now you’ve got me curious,” Aurelia said. “Come on.”

Millie followed her to one of the computers at the side door. Rob Keller had returned to his post.

“Move, Rob,” Aurelia ordered.

“Yes, ma’am.” He jumped up and Aurelia slid into his seat.

Aurelia’s slim fingers danced over the press pads. “Here it is. Althan Tahk.”

Millie and Rob leaned closer. On the screen was a picture of the spiral-antennaed Kaprinian along with background information that was fairly standard. It got interesting at the bottom where it read: Diplomat--Klon-dor capital city of Kaprine--liaison attached to GEM Co. Negotiating Team #1.

“Team number one is Renner Conlin’s team isn’t it?” Rob asked.

Aurelia nodded.

“I guess it would make sense if Conlin is negotiating a deal with the Kaprinians,” Millie said.

“Since when does a diplomat get a regular PEF card?” Aurelia pointed out. “And if...” her fingers moved again, bringing up another screen. “Look at this. His card is a Priority A. My card is an A and that’s only because I hounded them for two years until they gave me one.”

Millie’s sympathies flew to the poor clerk who had probably borne the brunt of that hounding.

Rob shook his head. “I don’t even know what an A card is.”

“It means if I want to buy a billion dollar piece of equipment for the ship, I can.”

Rob looked suitably impressed.

“So why does an alien diplomat have one?” Millie asked.

“Good question. Maybe I’ll find out right now.” Aurelia shoved her chair back causing Rob to scramble out of her way.

Millie followed the surgeon back to her station, puzzled until she saw Renner Conlin waddling toward them. GEM Co’s chief negotiator was a little round, red-haired man with a little round, red-haired personality to match.