Centaur

  Centaur

  By

  Nobilis

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  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Centaur

  Copyright ã 2007 by Nobilis

  ISBN: 1-55410-801-2

  Cover art by Martine Jardin

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.

  Published by eXtasy Books

  www.Extasybooks.com

  To D, for understanding, to S, for support, and to A, for encouragement.

  Chapter One

  It took three men to bring him into the little clinic. He would stand seven feet tall if he’d been upright, and his limp arms bore the muscles of an olympic weightlifter—dense, not bulky like a bodybuilder. The green and black camouflage paint on his face and chest gave his features a sinister cast. His square, powerful jaw and hairy eyebrows gave his face an extremely masculine edge. His reddish-brown hair was more like fur, short and thick.

  Opal checked him over quickly. He had two gunshot wounds to the chest and one in the abdomen; his vital signs were weak. “Internal bleeding. Prep him for surgery.” The men lay the injured man on a gurney and started pulling off his pants.

  Opal stepped into the prep closet and hit the control. She stripped off her brown long-sleeved jungle shirt and bound her long chestnut hair behind the back of her neck while the ultrasonics destroyed any pathogens on her skin. The sonic cycle finished and she readied herself for the sterile seal by placing a breath mask over her face. Robotic nozzles sprayed a flexible plastic film over the skin of her hands, arms, and upper torso.

  By the time she entered the surgery, the orderlies’ job of stripping the man’s clothing and gear and sterilizing his body was complete. Patches of paint still adhered to his body here and there. The ell-ess hooked up to his neck, gently pumped synthaheme into his bloodstream. Opal checked the display and shook her head; his blood pressure dropped in spite of the artificial blood.

  “Ell-ess, start surgical program alpha.” The life support machine, in addition to monitoring blood pressure and heartbeat, would maintain the proper levels of anesthetic, and warn Opal if any dangerous conditions appeared. A quick scan showed Opal the locations of the bullet fragments, extrapolated their trajectories through his body, and warned her which organs and arteries suffered the worst damage.

  Despite decades of medical robotic advances, a substitute for the trained human hand still eluded engineers. Opal took up the scalpel, a device unchanged in its essence since the Stone Age, and the man’s flesh parted under her hand. Finger-like appendages from the ell-ess probed the wounds, draining the blood and fluids for analysis and purification. The blood would then be given back to him to reduce the need for synthaheme.

  Opal spoke as she repaired broken blood vessels and ruptured organs. The ell-ess recorded her words without rendering judgment on the emotional tone that crept into her voice. She couldn’t believe he still survived. The ell-ess beeped an alarm. The synthaheme, it reported, was nearly gone. She threw off all pretense of objective demeanor.

  “Shit. Big man, stay with me, here... just keep beating that heart a little longer, okay? Just keep beating that heart, keep working those lungs.” The headband of her mask drew a heavy flow of sweat away from her face.

  Searching for the last bullet fragment and the last few ruptured arteries, she probed with her fingers amidst the man’s intestines. Her fingers brushed something hard, something that her scans missed. She explored it, tracing its outlines. Her brow furrowed in concentration. A jagged edge startled her, and she gingerly removed the object. She spared it only a moment of attention before setting it aside in a specimen tray.

  It would wait. His life hung by a thread.

  * * * *

  The little LCD screen illuminated the small corner of the tent where Opal sat. The report stared back at her, mocking her. She poured herself another shot of bourbon and sat back in the canvas chair. The liquor gradually transferred itself from outside her body to inside, but it failed to do her any good.

  The patient’s unusually large frame is only the beginning of a long list of anatomical abnormalities. The patient’s hair is unusually thick and short, more like fur than human hair, extending down along the spine to the third thoracic vertebra. The patient’s dentition is highly robust, even considering the development of the rest of his body, and seems to contain four extra molars. His fingernails and toenails are extremely thick.

  All of this is incidental, however, compared to the biochemical differences.

  The report went on in further detail, listing the numerous anomalies that the ell-ess discovered in the strange man’s blood. Opal even began to wonder if she could truly use the word “man” to describe him.

  Shouting broke Opal out of her reverie. Through the open flap of her tent she saw the light inside the recovery room swinging wildly. Silhouettes of grappling figures danced crazily on the fabric walls. She grabbed her medical bag and dashed across the little compound, fumbling inside for the air hypo. At the entrance she paused to pop in a cartridge of sedatives.

  Inside the tent the huge creature, who so recently lay helpless on her surgical table, stood in the middle of the room with all four of her assistants hanging from his arms and body. They struggled to bring him under control, without much effect. Opal jumped in close, held onto his arm, and jabbed the hypo against the veins on the inside of his arm. He roared and thrashed, and she flew across the room. She landed against the wall, tearing it free of the straps that held it to its supports.

  By the time she fought free of the heavy entangling sheet, the drug did its work. The big man fell, sprawled across an upturned bed, a red stain spreading under his bandage.

  Opal gathered her wits. She pointed to one of her assistants. “Natago! Get the closure kit. He’s torn open his wound.”

  “Let him bleed,” he said, in his native tongue. “He’s not worth the trouble, lady.”

  “Do as I say!” Opal held her hand to the wound. Blood squeezed out from the dressing, soaking her hand. She put her other hand to his neck. His weak pulse weakened. “And wheel in the ell-ess as well!”

  Opal and her assistants worked feverishly to get the big man back onto his bed and hooked up to the ell-ess machine. She cut away the dressing and quickly reassembled the failed bindings with strips of bio-adhesive plastic.

  By the time she finished, the ell-ess displayed several alarms. The bleeding left his blood pressure at a perilously low level. He needed blood, but the synthaheme had run completely out. Even with the ell-ess providing pure oxygen for him to breathe, his brain starved.

  She tapped the screen. The ell-ess confirmed her suspicions from its own analysis. There was only one option remaining, and she was the only one who could do it.

  A sterile hypodermic, attached to a length of plastic tubing, popped out of the side of the machine. While she fitted the heavy needle into the vein in the crook of her elbow, Natago brought over the gurney. She climbed up onto it, and allowed the machine to pump the life-giving fluid into his body.

  The ell-ess monitored the flow of blood careful
ly. It already knew her maximum blood volume of somewhat more than four liters, and calculated the recommended amount of blood that she could afford to donate. Tick by tick, it counted off the milliliters. One hundred. Two hundred. Three hundred. When it reached five hundred milliliters, it flashed a warning on the screen. Opal acknowledged it, checked the indicators for his pulse and blood pressure, and ordered the pumps started again.

  Six hundred. Seven hundred. She started feeling lightheaded, and lay back on the gurney. Eight hundred. She felt her heart thud in her chest. Nine hundred. The ell-ess bleeped an alarm and shut down the pumps. Opal turned her head and focused on the screen. She reached out, tried to touch the screen and make it start again, but the machine refused to transfer any more blood. Reluctantly, she initiated the cycle that would flush the blood that remained in the machine back into her veins, adding enough saline solution to bring her blood pressure back to a normal range.

  The ell-ess’s alarms quieted, and it returned to normal operation.

  It was enough.

  Opal sighed and lay back, listening to the comforting rhythm of his heartbeat.

  * * * *

  When he awoke a second time, he found his massive arms and legs bound to the side rails of his bed with thick wrappings of fabric, courtesy of Natago’s skill with knots. He tested his bonds, but they permitted him no freedom, no matter how much he grunted and strained. The faint greenish light from the luminous tent fabric gave his skin an unnatural cast.

  Opal sat up in the bed next to him, propped up on a small pile of pillows.

  “Let me go,” he growled.

  “Are you going to start savaging my staff again?”

  “If I leave, I can’t attack your staff. Release me.” His deep yet mellow voice possessed confidence and poise even in his weakness and constrained circumstance.

  “Who are you? Why did the villagers bring you into the clinic with bullet wounds?”

  He lay back, silent, and stared at the ceiling. His nostrils flared.

  “Alright, fine... don’t answer. I’ll make my own suppositions. Since you won’t tell me your name, I’ll give you one. I’ll call you… Pholus. You’re a soldier, probably a mercenary. You went to the Caribbean, or Beijing, and got some crazy genemods. You’re here because of the oil. You might be here to protect the rigs and pipelines, but I doubt it. Is that about right?”

  Pholus remained impassive.

  “Alright, how about this?” Opal tossed the cracked plastic casing onto Pholus’s chest. “I found that inside your body, nestled up between your kidneys. What is it?”

  Pholus looked down at the mysterious device. His brows knitted and his lips tightened to a grim line. He took in a deep breath and exhaled slowly.

  “It means something to you, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “You were very lucky. The bullet that destroyed that... whatever it is... narrowly missed killing you in about six ways. So… what is it?”

  “I can’t tell you.” He rested his head back against the pillow.

  “Well, Pholus… if you can’t trust me, then I can’t trust you. You’re going to stay right there for now.”

  * * * *

  After a fruitless morning in the recovery tent, Opal gave up on coaxing Pholus to talk. With the help of one of her orderlies, she made her way back to her personal tent. If weakness kept her from practicing medicine, she would tend to her administrative tasks instead. Opal knew well that the list always got longer, especially during crises.

  Opal allowed herself few luxuries in the wilderness, chief among them her bed. The villagers slept in hammocks or on the ground; patients in the recovery tent slept on camp beds. Opal’s tent housed a huge mattress and box spring, wrapped in a waterproof cover. She would have liked a set of four hundred thread count sheets to finish the set, but a light sleeping bag served more practically in her isolated circumstances.

  She rested on her bed and spoke in the general direction of the computer screen propped up against the tent pole. “Computer, open voice communications, keyword HAT.” It beeped three times, and then a voice crackled to life.

  “Harry’s Air Transport, Harry speaking… Hey! Opal... I was about to lift. What’s on your mind?” His tenor voice carried a thick Australian accent.

  “I need a couple extra canisters of synthaheme.”

  “No problem. I’ll roll ‘em on board as soon as we’re done with the call. Anything else?”

  “Have you heard anything about military action in the area?”

  “Nah, all the action’s way south. The rebels are boxed up and they’re negotiating surrender terms. You ought to listen to the ‘casts, everyone’s talking about it.”

  “Of course, Harry, you know I keep my ear to the ground. But there’s more than what comes out in the casts, right?”

  “True, true. I haven’t heard about anything up your way. Why do you ask?”

  “A soldier showed up at the clinic yesterday, all shot up. Some kind of commando.”

  “Weird. Any idea who he’s working for?”

  “He wouldn’t say. Definitely not a local. He’s got an American accent.”

  “Doesn’t mean much. Lots of mercs outta the ‘States these days.”

  “Yeah. Let me know if you hear anything, okay?”

  “Sure. Anything else you want me to bring you?”

  “Nothing that isn’t already in the order. See you tomorrow.”

  “Aye-aye, Doctor.”

  “Computer, close voice communications, please.” It beeped assent. “Computer, open news scanner, please.” Beep. The screen displayed headlines and short snippets of articles.

  “Computer, read articles one, two, three, six, eleven, and, hmm... fourteen, please.”

  Opal lay back in her bed, listened, and tried not to let it get her depressed. Flooding in Florida. Troops stationed on oil platforms off the coast of California. A malaria epidemic in Eastern Europe. New developments in stem cell therapies. Papal condemnation of genemod treatments. An artificial intelligence set up to monitor elections in Japan.

  “Computer, display investment summary page, please.”

  One of the companies in her portfolio showed a striking increase, due to the announcement of new pharmaceutical factories in Poland. “Computer, transmit a sell order for Niezawodny Pharmaceuticals, five thousand shares, please.” Opal felt a small pang of guilt for making money from the malaria epidemic, but practically speaking, she knew that her substantial investments made the project possible and those extra factories would make treating the epidemic easier. She felt no guilt at selling high, either; the speculators jumping in to grab it now would reap further rewards, or not.

  She reviewed the performance of her other investments, noting where to add money after the Niezawodny shares sold. She took a nap and had a quick lunch taken from her supplies, then dictated reports and letters to her colleagues in Port Moresby, Sydney, and San Francisco. Pholus figured prominently.

  A voice called from outside the tent. “Doctor Opal?” The evening choir of frogs and insects sang in the background.

  “Come in, Natago.”

  He came in carrying a large wooden bowl. “Dinnertime, Doctor Opal.”

  “Thank you, Natago. How is the big man?”

  “Still sleeping. The machine has not made any noise. There are three sick ones who have been brought from Kopiago. I will give them a place to sleep; you can see them in the morning.”

  “No, no, I’ll see them. Just make sure I don’t fall down on the walk over.” Opal swung her legs out of the bed and started to rise.

  “Eat first, Doctor Opal. They will not die while you eat.”

  Opal sighed. “You’re right.” She took the bowl, and put it in her lap. Chunks of yam and a few pieces of roasted meat jostled on some green leaves. “You are generous, Natago. Your family has enough tonight?”

  “You always ask, Doctor Opal, and I always tell you, you are a blessing on our village and it is good that you are not hu
ngry.”

  “Yes, but I do not want more than my share. I will eat the yams. Give the meat to Lina.” Lina, his wife, anticipated giving birth to their third child very soon. Opal took a leaf from the bowl, and picked out the meat. Even a hundred grams would make a difference.

  Natago nodded and took the leaf. “Good night, Doctor Opal.”

  Opal smiled. Their little ritual, played out every night at dinnertime, comforted her. It highlighted her membership in the community. She ate the bland tubers and listened to the forest sounds.

  * * * *

  The last patient of the evening, a middle-aged woman suffering from an infection in her foot, yawned widely as Opal finished dressing the wound.

  Opal fought the impulse to yawn too. “Okay, you’re all set.” As the woman limped out of the clinic tent, she sighed heavily and slumped against the examining table. She felt like lying down right there, but managed to keep herself awake and made her way across the little compound and into her sleeping tent.

  She peeled off the long, form-fitting brown shirt and pants, her daily protection against insects and the elements, and hung them from a line hanging between her tent’s corner poles. A fine dust fell from them as they shed, automatically, the day’s grime and residues.

  She drew her mosquito net around the bed and snuggled down into her sleeping bag.

  * * * *

  Opal jerked awake. The pale glow from her tent’s fabric gave enough light for her to make out a form standing at the foot of her bed. She could not mistake him. She gasped. “Pholus.”

  “What is ‘Pholus’?” He pulled the netting up and crawled onto the bed. “It sounds like you’re calling me a dick.”

  “No, that’s ‘phallus.’“ Opal sat up, holding the sleeping bag against her naked breasts. “Pholus was a centaur. A Greek myth.”