18:21 03/04/2587 –(8734/661/77/62)
Gabriel pulled himself off the operating table, sitting on its edge; he tapped where the doctor had worked and could feel the improvement. Where once the break was detectable, and he would have bent over in pain, there was only a slight bump where the crack once was, and only a dull ache remained.
“I think you’ll find I’m very good at my job,” the surgeon said, sending all his tools away for disposal or cleaning.
“I was not doubting you, merely feeling the difference for myself,” Gabriel replied, removing his hand from the injury, “got to love bone cement and nanomedicine,” he added.
“I can’t help but agree,” the surgeon said, turning to face him.
His surgeon was a Holuterc, whose name had turned out to be an unpronounceable combination of gurgles and croaks. They had not been surprised, and the translator he used said, “call me Bob.”
Their species was well known to Gabriel. They were Deathworlders, too, a race of semi-aquatic people from the world of Dolrtu. He stood roughly 1.5 metres tall; their body was a trunk-like structure supported on six fleshy legs spread evenly around the base.
One would be mistaken for thinking that the Holuterc were a species based on radial symmetry, but this was quickly dismissed when one noticed that their eyes were positioned on only one side of the body.
Bob’s six arms were arranged in pairs, running from top to bottom; each was a remarkably dexterous limb. Each end was covered in thousands of fine mobile cilia-like structures capable of fine motor control a human could only dream of.
All ten of his eyes were focused on Gabriel now. “I will say, it is rather refreshing to talk to someone with the suit off for a change,” said Gabriel.
“Well, you’ll get plenty of opportunities because I want you to spend the next two days in Death Ward,” replied Bob.
“Death Ward?” asked Gabriel, not frightened by the name, just surprised at the sheer unoriginality of it.
“If you’ve got a problem, bring it up with the administrators, it may be lacking in taste, but it gets the point across,” responded Bob; they had had this conversation dozens of times and had long ago gotten used to it.
“That aside, I want to monitor you in case some other deeper damage has been done. I don’t expect any, but better safe than sorry,” they explained, bringing the conversation back to the original topic.
“You’ll want to put your suit on,” explained Bob as Gabriel got to his feet.
“Why? It’s a Deathworlder Ward,” stated Gabriel.
“True, but a lot of the nurses and porters aren’t; not many of us are willing to go through the rigmarole of working here,” explained Bob. “So, for their sake, wear your suit.”
“You just said I would get plenty….” Gabriel protested, but Bob cut him off, “I said you would get plenty of opportunities. There is a common room, showers and other facilities in the ward, but the beds and whatnot are all in an area paradiseworlders can enter, so I repeat, wear the suit.”
Gabriel raised his hands and replied, “fine, you’ve made your point.”
Climbing into the outfit like you would a pair of overalls, Gabriel winced as his bruises and torn muscles complained. The treatment had done much to improve them, but medical science had done all it could. All that was left was to let time take its course.
A nurse arrived with a wheelchair, but Gabriel preferred to walk; as he left, he turned and said, “before I leave, I’ve got to ask….”
“The name?” replied Bob
“The name,” said Gabriel.
“I studied at Cambridge,” explained Bob.
***
“I recommend bed rest and no excitement for a few days,” the doctor explained. Pista had been taken to the hospital, and they were finally seen after ten hours of waiting. It had been rather annoying to be kept here for that long, but Nish accepted that there were other people with more serious concerns.
Pista, for her part, had recovered remarkably quickly, seemingly forgetting that she had nearly been something’s dinner. She revelled in the attention, and Nish knew it would go to her head.
As she left the doctor’s office and headed for the exit, Nish realised that the human was here too; she had seen the ambulance when she had been at A&E. Nish felt the meagre thankyou she had given him was hardly enough.
Approaching the reception desk and steeling her nerves, she asked, “excuse me; a human was admitted to this hospital. May I ask which ward they are in?”
“Are you a friend?” asked the receptionist, looking up from her terminal screen.
“No, but they saved my daughter's life, and I feel it would be appropriate to thank them in person,” Nish explained.
The alien looked at Nish and her daughter. They had heard of what occurred at the zoo, and a human and a Tufanda had been involved.
“Normally, we would not allow it, but considering the unusual circumstances, I can contact the ward he’s on, and they can ask him if he would like a visit”, the administrator explained.
“Yes, please,” replied Nish, relieved that she had not been rejected outright.
***
“Ah, the man of the hour himself,” someone said as Gabriel limped into the ward.
Turning to his right was a Ponut’Kild or Ponut’Klid; Gabriel wasn’t sure what the correct pronunciation was. They were a reptilian race, bipedal, standing on digitigrade legs with harsh angular scales covering their bodies.
Their face was long, robust and filled with sharp teeth, though partially hidden behind a mask covering her nose, mouth and eyes. Gabriel knew the Ponut’Kild was a she because of the lack of crests above the eyes and the absence of a dewclaw on the leg. And it was leg because the other one was currently in a cast.
“What?” asked Gabriel, very confused by what she meant.
“It’s you, the man who jumped into the Carnedon pen to save that kid,” she replied, waving her P.D.A. over her head.
“How did you know that?” he asked; her answer had not really told him anything.
The woman whistled and explained, “over thirty people were recording you, bro; you’re trending hard, just about everyone on the planet has seen it, look three million views in less than a day, and rising.”
The Ponut’Kild waved her P.D.A. at him, and Gabriel limped over to see for himself. To Gabriel's utter horror, she was correct. The woman hit play, and he saw himself swing the Vetoru over his head and down onto the log.
“Turn it off!” Gabriel demanded, turning away from the screen.
“Ah, camera-shy,” the woman replied, a hint of humour in her voice, but she did turn it off and put her P.D.A. away. “It will be on the news soon, probably have reporters and paparazzi stationed outside the hospital in less than a day,” she added.
Gabriel clutched his head in his hands and squatted on the ground, ignoring how his legs and ribs complained.
The Ponut’Kild relaxed her face, and her tone became serious, “It was very brave. I don’t know if I would have had it in me to confront that thing.”
Gabriel did not respond; he simply walked to the bed opposite them and lay upon it. “You ok?” the Ponut’Kild asked.
“Tired,” replied Gabriel, resting his head on the pillow.
“I’m Erilur, by the way,” the woman said.
“Gabriel,” he responded flatly.
A few moments of silence passed before Erilur said, “I know you people are tough and all, but that Carnedon should have crushed you like a Brist, suit or no suit. I mean, it’s not exactly power armour.”
She gave him a few seconds, but when Gabriel did not respond, Erilur said, “I guess you're enhanced in some way; the only question is cybernetics or biomechanics.”
“Biomechanics, my bones were reinforced with ceramics when I was a kid, plus all the standard ones like cancer resistance and immune boosters,” Gabriel replied. He wasn’t sure why he was telling her this, but Gabriel supposed it was because when Gabriel was doing so, he wasn’t thinking about what had happened at the zoo.
“Fancy,” Erilur stated, her more playful tone returning.
“Not really. Pretty much every human is genetically enhanced in some way. Only a few purists refuse to have any at all. There’s also the life and healthspan extensions that I’m sure you have as well,” Gabriel replied, looking at her.
The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
“You already know about me, Ms Erilur; what are you in for?” asked Gabriel.
She waved her hands over her cast, and Gabriel responded, “I got that part, but how did it happen?”
“Nothing quite as remarkable as you. I jumped off a wall that was a little too high,” explained Erilur.
“Jumped off, not fell off,” said Gabriel, raising one eyebrow.
“I did it to impress an Etulana,” Erilur replied, scratching one side of her face with her retractable claws. Preemptively responding to Gabriel’s next question, she explained, “In my defence, she is so freaking hot, she’s got this short face, and her scales are so smooth, it drives me wild.”
“I mean, I know the old trope about aliens just being Ponut’Kild with different skin tones and weird bits on their faces, but my god, did my people get lucky,” she added, stroking her arms
“You’re telling me you nearly killed yourself trying to impress a girl?” asked Gabriel, his mind still struggling to process this.
“Nothing about tried. It worked,” stated Erilur, looking directly at him.
“What do you mean it worked?” questioned Gabriel, sitting up.
“She visits me every day, and I’ve got a date when I’m released,” Erilur retorted, clicking her tongue as she did so.
Gabriel tried his best to rub his eyes through the suit. “Don’t give me that. Have you seen the Etulana? It's an entire race of babes! I mean, I’ve got no sexual or romantic interest in men, but even I find the Eutlana guys attractive. They're all just so feminine,” Erilur explained with a wave of her hand and a glint in her eye.
With that, Gabriel let out a slight chuckle; this woman might have been about as subtle as a brick, but her boundless enthusiasm was pleasant.
As his mood was on the up, a nurse entered the ward, another Holuterc. “Gabriel a, Nish and her daughter would like to visit you. Would you like to see them?” they asked.
***
Nish was let into the ward, but not before they sanitised their hands and were offered a rebreather for herself and Pista. It was a bit of a struggle to get it on her daughter's head, not least because the girl would not stop wriggling.
Eventually, Nish was able to make her compliant by bribing her with sweets. The ward was rather unremarkable, apart from the name, which Nish felt was in rather bad taste. The walls were white; the nurses sat behind a desk while small cleaner drones buzzed about the place, making sure not a single spot of grime survived more than a moment.
Nish was directed to where Gabriel was resting and left to her own devices. From outside the room, she could hear him talking with someone else.
“So, are you here by yourself?” asked Gabriel.
“Yes, I mean, I offered to bring my family along, but they had no interest in going to “soft paradise worlds,” the other voice replied.
“Where are they?” asked Gabriel.
“Well, balance of probability puts it at your home,” explained the other person.
“Earth,” said Gabriel. The other person did not reply, so Nish assumed they were giving a non-verbal cue.
“Where on Earth are they?” asked Gabriel.
“It’s an island, near the equator or something, La…. Lobo, Lanzorini,” the person explained.
There was silence for a few seconds before Gabriel said, “Lanzarote?”
“That’s it!” the person cried, “I take it you’ve been.”
“Yeah, once, I was supposed to be there for a week, but I left after two days,” answered Gabriel.
“Why? What’s the place like?” asked the other one.
“Well, if I had to describe it in one sentence, Lanzarote is a lego playset sticking out the sea,” he replied. The other one then started laughing. Clearly, they knew what lego was.
“Bored,” cried Pista and ran into the ward and lept onto Gabriel's bed.
“Pista, get off immediately!” cried Nish, starting to believe it had been a mistake.
“It’s fine, I don’t mind,” said Gabriel as Pista scrabbled closer and hugged him. Nish was amazed at this 180 her daughter had pulled; just two days ago, she believed the human was still some horrible thug, but now he was a shining knight.
“I’ll leave you three alone to get properly acquainted,” the other patient said. Nish looked to see a reptilian alien pull out a wheelchair from a cabinet and hauled herself into the seat without asking for any assistance.
“I didn’t mean to interrupt,” said Nish attempting to apologise.
“Nothing to be sorry for, I got a guest coming myself, and I need to look my best,” they replied, wheeling themselves out of the room. Before they left, they turned to Gabriel, winked and made a clicking sound, “see you later, Gabriel.”
“Have a nice shower Erilur,” Gabriel replied.
“They’re weird,” said Pista, still holding on to Gabriel.
“Pista!” said Nish.
“You’re right she is, but she’s the good kind of weird,” said Gabriel.
Gabriel had not gotten a good opportunity to see a Tufanda up close yet. Their skin was pale but not white; it was incredibly subtle, but if you looked closely, you would tell the shimmered with a faint multicoloured hue.
Their heads were covered with fine, downy hair that looked impossibly soft, and Gabriel had to resist the urge to run his hands through it. The two ladies also possessed a pair of antennae protruding from the forehead; while very thin, it was masked by the feathery filaments that covered them, similar to a moth.
The eyes were egg-shaped, Pista's eyes seemed larger than her mother's, but Gabriel assumed this was merely an illusion, as her head was not as big as Nish’s, and therefore they took up more of the face, similar to a human.
They were also compounded. Each lens was so fine that Gabriel could not make out any individual one despite the size of the eye, which was far larger than Gabriels. They must have hundreds of thousands of ommatidium at minimum, granting them a high level of visual acuity.
Gabriel shook his head; he tried to turn off the analytical part of his brain. “So, how are you feeling, Pista?” he asked, trying to use the most caring tone he could.
“Good,” the little girl chirped “, the doctors gave me one thousand fifty hundred bandages and some medicine.”
“Really, that many?” asked Gabriel.
“It was a placebo,” explained Nish.
Gabriel nodded, but Pista corrected, “it wasn’t pladeo. It was medicine.”
“We know a placebo is a type of medicine,” explained her mother.
Pista accepted her mother's response and went back to hugging Gabriel, “she’s very affectionate,” stated Gabriel, who wasn’t bothered by the act itself but did feel a little uncomfortable knowing that they were still technically strangers.
“Yes, she’s always been a very huggy person. Do humans do hugs?” asked Nish, worried that the act might be considered rude, despite Gabriel saying it was ok.
“Normally, it’s something you do with those who are close to you, but kids can get away with more,” he explained. “So tell me, Pista, how old are you?” inquired Gabriel, elevating his voice slightly.
“Nearly fifteen,” replied Pista, running her antennae up and down Gabriel’s mask.
“Wow, did you know when I was fifteen, it would be two years until I was a grown-up,” said Gabriel, grateful for the suit as he imagined her feelers would be highly ticklish.
“You would have been a little boy; how could you be a grown-up? Seventeen isn’t grown up,” replied Pista, looking out the window, her brain struggling to parse it.
“Humans grow up faster than most people. At seventeen, we’re considered adults,” he explained.
“How old are you now?” asked Pista, looking at Gabriel as she did.
“Twenty-seven,” he replied.
“So you’re still a kid like me,” stated Pista, who still hadn’t grasped the notion that aliens aged at different rates. Gabriel just chuckled in response, and the small talk continued. The conversation was pleasant if a little wooden, as neither side felt they belonged in it, apart from Pista, who was slowly edging Gabriel out of his bed.
That was until a stranger brazenly walked into the ward, “You’re are Gabriel Ratlu, yes?” the unknown person asked.
The alien was nearly as wide as it was tall, covered in wrinkly loose navy blue skin. Their mouth was wide, with two eyes that sat on small stalks that swivelled, examining every part of the room.
Their arms were long and spindly, and the only thing they wore on their body was a wearable on their arm, a rebreather over their face and a lanyard around their almost nonexistent neck. It had something written on it, but Gabriel could not determine what it said at this distance.
Pista hid behind Gabriel as the alien said, “Jhlohg, Daily Sapients, I was wondering if I could have a few moments of your time and give an interview.”
Gabriel did not respond; he just stared at them, wondering how they had gotten in here.
“You’re the talk of the planet, Mr Ratlu, jumping into that enclosure to rescue a little girl; you’re a hero to many. Do you have anything you want to say?” asked Jhlohg.
Once again, Gabriel said nothing and just stared.
“Surely you must want to tell the people something,” stated Jhlohg.
As Gabriel remained resolutely silent, Erilur returned from her shower and asked, “who the tfull are you?”
Jhlohg looked at the new arrival and explained; Erilur's mouth gapped as far as it could inside her mask and replied, “this is a hospital, and you come in here trying to get a story for your rag?”
“Nurse, we’ve got a troublemaker!” she called to the reception desk.
Several medical staff arrived, along with a porter performing his medication delivery. “This person, and I use the term loosely, is bothering Gabriel,” Erilur explained.
“You told us you were his legal counsel,” the nurse stated, incredulous.
“They lied,” Erilur stated, though she did respect the reporter's guile for not saying, friend. If they had done, they would have probably informed Gabriel beforehand. Galactic law stated that you could not bar a legal advisor from their client. Annoyingly that tended to lead to abuses like this.
As Jhlohg was removed from the hospital grounds, they cried, “people deserve to know the truth!”
“There are dozens of recording online; everyone already knows the truth, you asshole,” Erilur shouted in response.
Erilur said something in her native tongue while Gabriel did not know what she said; from the tone, he felt he could make a good guess. Pista started making a trilling sound, which Gabriel had learned was her giggling, “she said a naughty word.”
“Yes, I did, damn colu,” said Erilur.
“Colu?” asked Nish.
“They’re these little string-like things that suck your blood,” Erilur explained.
Nish and Pista were a little disturbed to hear this; it became even more so when Gabriel stated, “Yes, we have similar things on Earth called leeches.”
“There’s something like that on your homeworlds; sounds like the deranged fantasy of some horror writer,” said Nish, trying to get the image out of her head.
“Not just leeches, ticks, lampreys, vampire bats, bed bugs, assassin bugs, fleas….” Gabriel would have gone on, but Erilur cut him off.
“Look, while I would love to talk about parasites all day long, I think there are more important things to discuss,” Erilur said, wheeling herself towards Gabriel, “the main one is why you didn’t tell them to get lost yourself, you’re a surprisingly shy one aren’t you.”
“And you’re a surprisingly astute one, considering we’ve known each other for less than an hour,” stated Gabriel, tilting his head.
“I’m a psychologist; it’s my job to understand what makes people tick,” explained Erilur, her tone far more serious than he had ever heard.
“You have a degree, and you still did that,” pointing at her leg. “I guess it’s true you don’t have to be intelligent to pass university,” Gabriel replied, shaking his head.
Erilur spun her wheelchair around in a circle, and her tone immediately returned to the cheeky style she usually adopted; she replied, “Do I need to keep repeating it? My plan worked, so it was clever.”
“He won’t be the last, you know; you’re going to be douluged for days at least, most likely weeks,” said Erilur, her voice once more becoming sombre.
“Dluogde?” asked Pista, waving her antennae back and forth.
“Pestered, annoyed, never left alone,” explained Erilur.
Gabriel sighed and was about to lean back onto his bed when he recalled that Pista was still there, and he felt that crushing the girl would not have been the best look. “Any suggestions?” asked Gabriel, who was far out of his element.
“It won’t be easy; you’re the biggest story Minagerad has had in fifty years,” explained Nish, running a hand over her fuzzy scalp.
“Someone keeps up with galactic news, and it won’t just be him, the press will lay off you a bit considering Pista’s age, but they will want your side of the story as well,” said Erilur wheeling towards Nish as she did.
“I did my research before I came. I picked this place because Pista likes animals, most of the time, and its exceptional safety record,” explained Nish.
“Until now,” Erilur added.
A hand passed over Gabriel’s eye; Pista had become bored with the grownups’ conversation and had begun trying to figure out what Gabriel looked like under the suit. It was an odd sensation. Four hands prodded and probed his face, arms, back and chest, made all the more unusual because he knew only a single person was doing it.
“Pista, stop it,” Nish said, taking her daughter’s arms and putting them back where they belonged. Pista squealed and turned away from her mother, lying on the bed in a huff.
“You’re two main options are to either lay low for a month and miss out on a lot of your holiday,” said Erilur.
Gabriel sighed, and Nish hissed, “I take you you don’t want that, so the only other thing you can do is meet it on your own terms,” Erilur added.