Isn't It Strange To Create Something That Hates You?

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Vortrand had been moved to the recility ward. He lay unbuckled on the patient table. Tremors had ceased. That couldn't be good. Reesa leaned against the long workstation counter running the length of the back wall. Silent, she folded her arms. Fingertips dug into her pale biceps.


"Where's doctor Puu?" Lily asked as she entered.


"Here." The doctor stepped from the adjoining chamber to the east. A number of long necked bottles and bundles of dried foliage crowded his arms. Lily held out the specimen bottle.


"I have the searum."


The items doctor Puu carried crashed to the floor as he hurried to her. "Give it to me."


Metal joints scraped Lily's fingers when she handed off the bottle.


"How did you get it?" Reesa pushed off the counter, but didn't move from her place behind the patient table.


"Vlex."


Dark brows climbed Reesa's forehead. "The Utori we have in the belly just gave you a cure for my brother?"


Lily dropped her head in acknowledgement. The lieutenant-technician's face darkened.


"What did you give him in exchange?"


"His life. I had the Striker on him. He either gave up the searum or I put a new hole in his head." That sounded like something a woman in a barriersuit holding an L-Striker would say. Pushing out one hip, she lazed against the workstation counter like that woman would.


Reesa's mouth twisted. "You don't have it in you. He would have known that and wouldn't have given you a thing."


Lily slumped over. "But he did." She pooched out her lips.


"He gave you something. But he wouldn't give you the solution to your problem without advancing his own agendas."


Doctor Puu had emptied some of the specimen bottle into a device resembling a piercing gun. Angling Vortrand's head away, he placed the injection gun to his neck. Reesa shot to the slab and knocked away the doctor's hand.


"We don't know anything about that shit other than it came from a Utori who would love nothing more than to see my brother dead. We have to test it."


Doctor Puu was frantic. "In the time it will take to run the test we will lose the captain." He aligned the gun again and Reesa caught his wrist.


"No."


Lily growled out a frustrated sound. "What would be the point of giving me bogus searum if doing nothing kills him anyway?"


"Torture?" Reesa said. "Utori are twisted creatures. That one would make my brother's death very painful given the opportunity."


"Or it could save him." Lily said.


Doctor Puu interrupted them. "If I'm to administer the searum I must do it now." The injection gun hovered at Vortrand's neck.


Though she shook, Lily said, "He's going to die if you don't let doctor Puu inject him."


Blood-dark eyes fixed on Lily's and the little hairs dusting her nape stood up. "The consequences fall on your head. I don't give a shit about the genetic data rattling around in there. If my brother dies you'll be joining him."


Lily gulped as Reesa signaled her approval to the doctor. The gun activated with a pneumatic hiss. The needle punched out and pierced Vortrand's neck. When he drew the gun away, the lieutenant-technician expelled a long breath.


"We will know if the searum has taken effect in a few peccards," doctor Puu said. "He will either expel the toxin through his pores...or he will die." He began stripping Vortrand. Lily about faced. "If you would wait for me in my quarters, I will treat your injuries once the lieutenant-technician and myself have the captain stabilized."


With everything that transpired, Lily had, on the whole, forgotten her own hurts. As adrenaline finally ran dry, her body wailed its complaints. Nose and cheek were balloonish and bruised. The fingers Vortrand chomped burned and pulsed. Muscles at last loosening after being wound tight for the last few ards plagued her with aches.


"Don't waste your time on her yet," Reesa said. "If my brother stops breathing she won't need any treatment."


Lily winced.


"None the less, I will make my preparations. See there? Expulsion has already begun."


Thank God, Lily thought but didn't turn around. She trudged towards the doctor's quarters at the east end of the recility ward.


The chamber adjoining the lab was bigger than the standard passenger quarters on the second tier. While papers, apparatus, herbs, and curios cluttered the ward, doctor Puu's private chamber was sparsely outfitted. The plush rug and oversized pillows Lily sat amongst made up the predominant furnishings. She splayed her fingers over the carpet's thick fibers. Oranges, crimsons, and golds spiraled and tangled in a labyrinthine pattern. She sank into the nest of pillows at her back. Square cushions of vibrant blue and purple silk piled under smaller circles of damask seeded with copper beads and lined with bronze tassels. They sighed a bergamot perfume.


Flagettes twisted into stalks stretched up in the room's four corners. Lustules the stalks supported washed the room in amber light. A few fat books, a darkened censer, and a persotome sat on a low table against the south wall. Above the table hung a framed ink drawing rendered in a sketchy hand. Several similar drawings hung in small clusters on other walls. The sketches' subjects were roots, leaves, and blossoms she couldn't name. Symmetrical blocks of annotation in alien script accompanied the pictures.


Will I ever get to art school? Lily wondered, then her thoughts trailed to vague confusion.


Doctor Puu bustled into his chamber, his medical bag and a slate in hand. Situating himself before her, he set up his workstation and slate alongside them and set to work first on her face. A lecture accompanied each soothed hurt. He explained the properties of balms he applied and the distillation process of each. For the swelling at her nose and cheeks, he demonstrated a Titian massage technique which redirected the flow of collected fluids. Luckily, he said, her nose wasn't broken and didn't need setting.


"That Verakian woman gave you a love tap," doctor Puu said. "A real punch would have collapsed your facial structure."


Lily poked her no longer puffy cheek. "Felt like a real punch to me."


"I doubt you'd survive a real punch from a Verakian. Remove the top of your barriersuit for me. Those arm wrappings should be ready to come off."


A few touches to the secondary function cores loosened the barriersuit enough for Lily to wriggle out of its upper half. The doctor hissed when she displayed her chewed fingers. Gashes that ringed the index and middle digits on her right hand were deep. Deeper than she'd thought. Sticky patches of rust stained her whole hand.


A cool cloth damp with antiseptic cleansed her. Teeth ground against freezing needles of pain that stabbed her palm. She chattered to distract herself.


"I guess Reesa decided I can live."


Doctor Puu procured a small squeeze tube with a long, slender nozzle at its mouth. "I believe the captain and yourself are safe for the moment."


Pinching her gnawed index finger with two of his golden ones, he squeezed a line of paste with a pearly sheen over her broken skin. He did the same to her other damaged finger. Paste melted into her wounds and itched. Bad. When she went to scratch, the doctor caught her hand and shook his head. "It's a smart fiber paste. Irritating while it bonds, but more effective on deep cuts in skin that's often mobile than standard sealant. With this dermal weave in place you won't lose use of your fingers while they heal. Once you've mended the weave will slough with the dead skin."


Lily marveled at her fingers. The paste created an elastic membrane melded with her skin.


The doctor peeled away the thick bandage covering her sternum and clucked his tongue. "This needs more time." He applied a fresh bandage then unwrapped a section of her flagette skewered arms. "These can come off."


While he unwound her wrappings, Lily stared at his bandaged hand and the bit of gold poking from the cloth. Sightline flicked up. The ragged tear on his ear glistened with sealant.


"Will your hand be ok?" Lily asked.


"With the lieutenant-technician's help, yes. The mending will be temporary. It will serve until I can locate an engineer familiar with Pashpan prosthetics. For that, I am dependent on the captain."


Brows knitting together, Lily asked, "Why do you have prosthetics?"


"For the same reason I possess spoken language and accumulate knowledge, wealth and skill. I am a Tainted Pashmi."


"I see." She must have communicated her befuddlement through her tone because the doctor sighed and elaborated.


"On Pashpa there are no words save those uttered by the tainted of our race. True Pashmi do not need words because we, they, dwell within the Continuum.


"True Pashmi exist within a great web of unity. Communication requires no medium. It is mind to mind, soul to soul. It is indescribable."


A rapt expression beatified doctor Puu's features. "The Continuum is complete understanding. It is love. It is a certainty you are never alone and it is that which compels me to service."


During the doctor's speech, Lily twisted her unbandaged arms in the light. Little scars, slices of unnatural smoothness, flecked her limbs silver.


"Were I not tainted, my mind would be one with the other True Pashmi. I would not have these prosthetics." He held up one glinting mechanical hand. "Nor these clothes because there would be no need. These hands and feet, this upright posture and bipedal stance, are all gifts the Bralians gave to the first Tainted Pashmi over a sega-septsession ago. These gifts and the status we reap with them have passed down our family lines ever since."


Finished with her treatment, doctor Puu left the room briefly and returned with a small hot plate, pot and a motar and pestle. Several dry ingredients he tore and crumbled into the heavy stone cup piled in the pot.


"Why would anyone accept gifts that tainted them?" Lily asked.


The mixture doctor Puu ground with the pestle became a paste that smelled of oats and clove.


"They did not know at the time. True Pashmi eschew other species. The ancient Pashmi knew of other life on distant planets and other galaxies. They couldn't travel the stars physically, but through the Continuum, they gained wisdom and knowledge by projecting their collective consciousness across the unknown expanse of the universe. They observed the Bralians and countless others, watched other sentients through their own minds ages before those sentients discovered Pashpa. No one possessed the power to bodily navigate the heavens. That is what the ancient Pashmi thought. But the Bralians came and the ancient Pashmi, possessing not even the crudest tools, had no physical defenses and they would never defile the sanctity of the Continuum by using it as a weapon."


"The Bralians invaded Pashpa?" Lily pulled on the top of her barriersuit and tightened it.


"It was a peaceful encounter." Doctor Puu scraped the mashed contents of the motar into the pot. "The first aliens who set foot on Pashpa were scientists, anthropologists, linguists and a few Sisters and Mistresses of the Red and White Orders."


Red Order?


Lily pictured the dark haired woman in the crimson uniform. Camille's friend? Her protector? Doctor Puu switched on the hot plate beneath the pot.


"The ancient Pashmi did not wish the Continuum contaminated with alien thoughts and alien habits and alien speech. They honored a small number of their own to act as intermediaries. This number would be the voice of Pashpa. With their mental barriers set to protect the Continuum, they created a false mental isolation and lived among the visiting Bralians." He stirred the mixture which bubbled. A spicy, sweet fragrance filled the chamber.


"A few of the honored Pashmi were seduced by Bralian technology. They fetishized these objects and the power they exerted over the physical world. In exchange for Pashpan knowledge, the Bralians created and fitted a few of the honored with the first mechanical prosthetics. Paws were replaced with hands for making. They were given feet for walking after their spines were straightened, their legs broken and reformed. These few altered Pashmi convinced the rest that this was the future of our race." Blue lids shuttered red eyes. The doctor's ears flattened against his head. His tail swept the floor behind him.


"When the honored finally dropped their mental barriers and ended their self imposed isolation, the Continuum, the collective consciousness of the Pashmi, recoiled from their tainted brothers and sisters. The True Pashmi rejected those they had honored. Through the Continuum's power, they stunted the minds of the tainted and cast them out to preserve the integrity of our species."


From the low table at his back, doctor Puu retrieved a cup and poured some of the pot's contents into it. He handed the cup to Lily then sat with his head bowed and his hands folded in his lap.


"The ancient Pashmi could not keep Pashpa isolated as they had after the advent of first contact. They needed the tainted ones to act for them in this new universe. The True Pashmi used the Continuum to control and keep the tainted loyal, to bind them to the communal bliss they once shared. We access the Continuum through appointed conduits called Intercessors. They allow us access and prevent contamination to the Continuum with their mental barriers. We tithe a portion of our earnings in return, hence our contracts. We purchase degrees of freedom from our isolation, but we can never buy our way back in."


Golden fingers touched doctor Puu's chest and massaged the place just above his heart. "There is a hole," he said in a pained voice. "We try to fill it or forget it as all individuals do with wealth, with knowledge and with power. The riches you admire accumulated through my bloodline as the debt of the first contamination passed from one generation to the next. But I ask you, truly, what good is all the wealth in the universe when it cannot buy you peace? When it cannot bring you home?" He ran his hands over his head, standing his fur on end. "I have nothing else."


The cup cooled in Lily's hands. Throat tightened. She rubbed away the rawness unfurling in her own chest. A film of tears misted her sight.


"If you had a son or daughter they would be tainted too?" She asked.


"If I had them, but I will not. I will not bear a child into the Continuum to have that child excised when they come of age. My line ends with me. No one should inherit an emotional debt this great." He laughed a dead laugh. "We even have a game we teach recently excised Pashmi to help them navigate their new worlds. It's called Prestige."


"How do you play?"


"I will show you if it will make you happy, but now you should drink." He indicated her cup.


Lily drank. The thick liquid was warm and very sweet. She inhaled its strong aroma. Spice cleared her sinuses. The medicinal draught suffused and relaxed her limbs with warmth. The insides of her cheeks, her tongue and lips numbed. Eyelids fluttered and she yawned, covering her mouth, but she couldn't sleep yet. She had something to tell doctor Puu. Head lowered.


"I didn't mean for you to get hurt," she whispered. Though she felt his eyes on her, the doctor kept silent. She clenched the cup. Lips quavered. "I hated that they looked down on us. I wanted to show them they couldn't—"


"I know," doctor Puu said. The slate rested in his hands. The blue glow of the HOptic tile picked out the iridescent shimmer in his fur. "The captain's vitals are strong. I must tend to him shortly."


"Did I do the wrong thing?" A salty tear slid over Lily's nose, dropped off its tip, and into her cup. One of the doctor's hard, cool hands cupped the top of her head.


"Yes."

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